The Municipalization 



of May and Recreation 



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Book Z ?) 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



The Municipalization of Play 
and Recreation 



The Beginnings of a New Institution 



By 

JOSEPH RICHARD FULK, Ph. D. 

Professor of Education, Teachers College 
University of Florida 






AUG 1 4 1922 



THE CLAFLIN PRINTING COMPANY 
UNIVERSITY PLACK, NIIRAIKA 



►CI.A681380 



'WO 



PREFACE 

My work as superintendent of city schools forced me into 
this problem. The recreational life of small cities and towns 
is so unsatisfactory, so wasteful, and so morally dangerous, 
that I was led to attempt to understand it. My master's 
thesis, "The Motion Picture Show with Special Reference to 
its Effects on Morals and Education," increased my interest 
in the human struggle for wholesome and developmental ex- 
ercise of fundamental instincts. This little book is an at- 
tempt to show one tendency in this struggle. 

The manuscript of this book was accepted, in 1917, in 
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doc- 
tor of philosophy at the University of Nebraska. It is pub- 
lished as written at that time with a few minor changes and 
additions. Some new matter has been introduced in chapters 
ii, iii, and iv. However, no attempt has been made to follow 
the problem through and after the World War. Social condi- 
tions were normal in 1917. 

Ideas and facts have been taken freely from others. 
Credit in no case has been purposely omitteS. 

The writer here expresses his deep obligation to many 
city officials, and other persons, who have so kindly answered 
questions, and sent helpful material. To Dr. G. W. A. Luckey 
for his wise direction, and to my wife for her patient and 
skillful assistance in the preparation of the manuscript, I am 
especially indebted. 



July, 1922 JOSEPH R. FULK 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 

Preface , ...III 

Chapter I 

Introduction 1-4 

Leisure and work 1 

Labor, congestion, and neglect of leisure 1 

The American city and its advantages „ 2 

Leisure, a serious city problem.. 2 

A new institution forming in the city ..., 3 

Purpose of the following chapters 3 

Play versus work 3 

Play, recreation, leisure, as used 4 

Chapter II 

Active Recognition of the Social Value of Play and Rec- 
reation 5-14 

Play and work, problems of civilization 5 

. Democracy and leisure related 5 

Labor, leisure, and dissipation 6 

Power of environment 6 

Conditions growing out of immigration and congestion 7 

Recreation a necessary human need 8 

Social changes taking recreation from the home 8 

Private enterprise exploits the need 8 

Rise of Playground and Recreation Association of 

America 9 

Early city play centers 9 

The schools recognize recreation 10 

The community center movement „ 10 

Recreation legislation 11 

Recreation surveyed 12 

City planning and recreation 13 

Public interest and support of recreational means 13 

Industrialism fosters recreation 14 



vi MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

Chapter III 

Page 
Factors Forcing Public Recognition of Play and Recrea- 
tion J 15-24 

Slow recognition of recreation as a social problem 15 

Perverted forms of recreation 16 

Problem of human living together 17 

Results of urbanization 17 

Shorter labor day and unprotected leisure 19 

Child labor laws and child idleness 20 

Commercialization of leisure 20 

Failure of school and church to solve the problem 21 

Recreational prestige of the big city .22 

Labor's need for wholesome recreation 22 

Summary 23 

Chapter IV 

Municipal Recognition and Administration of Play and 

Recreation . 25-37 

Progressive meaning of public utilities 25 

General administrative plans . 25 

Recreation commission and superintendent 26 

The Detroit plan, the Recreation Commission 26 

Playground Department, Los Angeles.... 31 

Cleveland, Department of Public Welfare 31 

Superintendent of Recreation, Dayton 32 

Board of Park Commissioners, Springfield 32 

Chicago's complicated system.... 33 

Duplication and lack of coordination 33 

Forms and tendencies in municipal management 34 

City expense for recreation 34 

Summary „ 36 

Chapter V 

A Study of the Public Play and Recreation Facilities of 

Forty-Six Small Cities and Villages of Nebraska.. 38-88 

A. Introductory — Some Recent Investigations of Munic- 
ipal Recreation ..38-43 

The survey movement..... 38 



TABLE OF CONTENTS vii 

Page 

Definition and grouping of surveys 38 

Purpose of this study 39 

Typical small town studies 39 

Purpose of these brief reviews 43 

B. State Regulations Relating to Recreation 43-45 

Growth of recreation legislation 43 

Native legislation , 44 

Positive and constructive laws . 44 

Permissive laws .... 45 

C. An Inventory of the Public Play and Recreation 

Facilities of the Forty-Six Cities and Villages.... 45-59 

Population of the towns . 45 

Density of population of the state 46 

Distribution of the towns 46 

Sources of data used i 46 

Value of the mayors' replies 49 

Grouping of recreation activities —..... 49 

Governmental agencies , — 50 

Commercial agencies , 51 

Incidental Agencies , 52 

Religious, philanthropic, and social agencies 53 

Typical recreation facilities , 54 

Attitude of mayors toward recreation 56 

Conclusion . -58 

D. The Utilization and Inadequacy of the Public Play 

and Recreation Facilities in the City and Vil- 

ages 59-68 

Author's right to interpret data... 59 

Public school recreation , 59 

Libraries and recreation 60 

Value of open air concerts 60 

Uses of city halls \ 61 

Billiards popular and under ban 61 

The passing of traveling shows 61 

Baseball and carnivals 62 

Constancy of incidental agencies 62 

Ancillary use of recreation 63 

Relation of recreation to religious life 64 

Church existence takes church energy 65 



viii MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

Page 

Recreational trend of lectures, etc » 66 

Semi-private agencies 67 

Uses of community buildings 67 

Summary „ 68 

E. The Evaluation and Meaning of the Complex and 
Over-Lapping Agencies of Public Play and Rec- 
reation , . 68-88 

Systemless and inefficient recreation , 68 

Purpose of this division ... 68 

Towns studied are rural 69 

Ruralness of Nebraska '. 70 

State population typically American 70 

National social consciousness 71 

Travel, education, and literature as factors 71 

Commercialism and big city prestige 72 

Social betterment movements 74 

The community Christmas tree 74 

Development of community music „ 75 

Music and industry .:. „.. 77 

The social center a rediscovery , 78 

Local clubs 79 

Strength of social forces in small and large cities.. 79 

A conception of the development of civilization 80 

Metropolitan urbanization 81 

Home and congestion in small towns 82 

Industrialism and the home .... 83 

Other factors of family disintegration 83 

Recreation a free-lance agency 84 

Summary of factors weakening the home 84 

Hinderances to social readjustments ~ 85 

Home becomes secondary „ 86 

A new institution in the margin of leisure 87 

Conclusion - 87 

Chapter VI 
Conclusion 89-90 



Bibliography , . 91-97 



The Municipalization of Play 
and Recreation 



CHAPTER I 

Introduction 

"Economists have been for a long time trying to dis- 
cover how best to employ the energies of men. Ah ! if I could 
but discover how best to employ their leisure ! Labor in plenty 
there is sure to be. But where look for recreation ? The daily 
work provides the daily bread, but laughter gives it savor. 
Oh, all you philosophers! Begin the search for pleasure! 
Find for us, if you can, amusements that do not degrade, joys 
that uplift. Invent a holiday that gives everyone pleasure 
and makes none ashamed. ,, (107: 23-24.) 

Leisure is relief from work. Work, in ordinary usage, is 
whatever is purposely undertaken by an individual that "he 
would not at the time undertake for its own intrinsic satisfy- 
ingness." (114: 10.) Protected, protracted work, mental and 
muscular, is a product of modern civilization and a measure 
of its development. Unprotected, protracted work, chiefly 
muscular was the basis of ancient civilizations. The protection 
of work and the consequent diffusion of leisure are character- 
istic of modern democratic civilizations. 

The conservation of labor is a new government function 
that the state has been forced to assume, largely because of 
the social complications arising from the congestion of popu- 
lation in great cities, and the encroachments of modern in- 
dustrialism. It has grown up through the city. At first it 
was essentially a municipal problem. 

Governmental intervention has not only diffused leisure, 
but has added to leisure time. A shorter labor day, and child 
labor regulations have, perhaps, contributed most to these 
changes. Though leisure has been diffused and increased, no 
institution has assumed responsibility for its utilization. Pro- 
tection of leisure has not at all kept pace with protection of 



2 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

labor. The complicated and troublesome social situation of 
the city has forced some recognition of the problem of public 
leisure by municipal government. 

The American city is redeeming itself. "A new spirit 
pervades the city of today — a spirit of hopefulness and genuine 
interest in the common welfare. A quarter of a century ago, 
and less, writers were deploring the failure of American cities." 
(89: 1.) In 1916, Dr. Munro stated that American cities had 
made more progress in "clean and efficient government" dur- 
ing the last decade than in the half century preceding. (72:1) 
Dr. Wood reports that standards of living and health in the 
cities have risen above those of the country ; that "rural school 
children are less healthy, and are handicapped by more physi- 
cal defects than children of the city schools, including all the 
children of the slums" ; and, that for the years 1910-1915, the 
general death rate of New York City was lower than the 
death rate of rural New York during the same period. (120: 
232-33.) The large cities have more effective pure food laws, 
and purer water than rural sections. The congestion of the 
heterogeneous peoples in industrial centers, which really make 
the American cities, has forced municipal recognition and 
solution, or attempted solution, of these and many other re- 
lated social problems. 

The extension of the functions of city government has 
been rapid and important during the last half century. The 
municipalization of such public utilities as water, sewers, and 
light, is a commonly accepted practice. Some provisions for 
public leisure have long been made by cities through the or- 
dinary channels of government. A wide extension of these 
provisions has been made in many cities within recent years. 
However, no attempt has been made in any city to provide and 
control all means for public play and leisure. 

The leisure problem, in all its ramifications, is still the 
menace of the city. Conservative estimates report that at 
least eighty per cent of all offenses against society are com- 
mitted during leisure time. Slowly the cities are assuming 
responsibility and providing facilities for the care of public 
leisure. As home, church, vocation, education, government, 
has each built up around itself a complex of customs, regula- 
tions and equipment for satisfying human wants and needs — 
in short, an institution — so is public play and leisure building 
about itself the bulwark, and the machinery of a new institu- 



INTRODUCTION 3 

tion, which may be called Recreation, or Play and Recreation. 
Chiefly through the government of cities is this institution 
forming. The control and management of many of the activities 
that will when understood and organized make the new in- 
stitution, are at present passing over into the recognized 
channels of city government — are being municipalized. The 
municipalization of these activities marks the beginning of 
the institutionalizing of them. For the five great agencies or 
institutions of civilization — the church, the home, the school, 
the vocation, and the state — are not able, either individually or 
collectively, to take care of the new social situation introduced 
into modern civilization by the development of these activities. 
Just as education as an institution has grown out of and 
through the home, the church, and the state, so is recreation 
as an institution growing out of and through all the other in- 
stitutions. The municipality is recreation's most rapid growing 
point at present. 

The five major institutions of civilization are not five tight 
compartments into which the elements of civilization may be 
placed, all of each element in one compartment. The school 
does not provide all education. The municipalities will not 
provide for all recreation. The other agencies will continue 
to provide play and recreation facilities. The municipality, 
and finally the institution, Recreation, will provide and con- 
trol all public play and recreation facilities, and will at- 
tempt to eliminate all that are unwholesome, whether public 
or not, and will build up a developmental community system 
of public play and recreation. It is the purpose of the following 
chapters to show that such an institution, with powers and 
ideals as above stated, is in process of formation in the cities 
of the United States. 

All relief from work is not play or recreation. Play and 
recreation are not all of leisure, neither are they all leisure. 
Hard and fast lines have not been drawn between leisure and 
work ; nor between work and play ; nor between play and rec- 
reation; nor between recreation and dissipation. The fact 
of play is best exemplified in the unrestrained, spontaneous 
activities of children. We recognize the play of children when 
we see it, and we recognize the feeling of play in ourselves 
when we experience it. The origin and significance of play are 
not so evident. No attempt will be made here to enter into 
a discussion of the theories of the origin of the tendency to 



4 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

play. Play is a normal activity of the child, and its free ex- 
ercise is necessary for complete development. Recreation in 
some form is necessary for normal adult life. The term, play, 
includes the free activities of children, and the pleasurable 
activities of children and adults that are not included in work 
or recreation. Play may exhaust child energy as work does 
adult energy. Recreation, so-called, may dissipate adult en- 
ergy, and break down character. 

Recreation is a re-creating — a refreshing and recuperating 
of the energies of mind and body after work. John Dewey is 
right when he says of recreation: "No demand of nature is 
more urgent or less to be escaped. The idea that the need can 
be suppressed is absolutely fallacious and the Puritanic tra- 
dition which disallows the need has entailed an enormous crop 
of evils/' (26: 241-42.) 

Some work is really not work for all who perform it. 
"Whatever one does for the pure love of it, that is play." 
(28a: 164.) The mental attitude of the worker largely 
determines for him whether the activity is work or play. 
This mental attitude is governed, in a great measure, by 
environment. Again, the words of Dewey are fitting. He says : 
"In their intrinsic meaning, play and industry are by no means 
so antithetical to one another as is often assumed, any sharp 
contrast being due to undesirable social conditions." (26 : 237.) 
Work done as play is not true recreation. Play and recreation 
may on account of misdirection, overstimulation, and excess 
become forms of dissipation. These chapters deal with public 
forms of play and recreation in cities of the United States. 

Though play may be creation as well as recreation, and 
leisure may be neither, to avoid repetition, the terms are often 
used interchangeably throughout this discussion. The insti- 
tution, comparable in importance to the home and the school, 
which it is contended is now in process of formation, is called 
Recreation. 



CHAPTER II 

Active Recognition of the Social Value of Play and Recreation 

With primitive man play and recreation were not sep- 
arated as distinct parts of his activities. He probably played 
at his work or worked at his play indifferently. Recreation 
was fortuitous. There were no rules outside of his own de- 
sires and needs except those fixed by nature's limitations. 

The problem of play and recreation has grown out of civil- 
ization. The civilized adult plays and requires recreation, be- 
cause the social requirements of a complicated civilization 
compel him to work at stated intervals, and usually at definite 
narrow tasks. Social organization fixes his periods of leisure, 
but does little toward conserving and caring for them. Chil- 
dren at present play for the same reasons that they have al- 
ways played, but usually with civilization's handicaps. Proper 
facilities are often wanting, and free periods are interfered 
with by institutions that are over-zealous to make adults of 
them, or monetary profit from them. 

The development of democracy has increased the margin 
of leisure. Probably, a larger proportion of the population of 
the United States has longer and more frequent periods of 
play and recreation, than have ever before been so used by any 
highly civilized people. It is the need of the conservation and 
the protection of this increased margin that makes the recrea- 
tion problem. External pressure or coercion may make an 
activity, though short in duration, drudgery and fatiguing. This 
tends to pervert nature's demands for relaxation, and dis- 
sipation may follow. (26: 240.) Machines, excessive special- 
ization, vocational misfits, and the efficiency drive of indus- 
trialism, augment this tendency. If there is little or no self 
expression in work there is not natural self expression in lei- 
sure. When external pressure is removed, there is a tendency 
to go too far in the opposite direction, and the liberty of lei- 
sure leads to self indulgence — to perverted leisure, to dissipa- 
tion — before the balance is restored. 

Man is not a machine. Cessation from regular action of 
work is not followed by regular inaction of rest, which is of 
use only as a preparation for another period of work. This re- 
lation between work and rest was approximated when labor 



/ 



6 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

was a slave's lot, and the laborer was pushed to the limit of 
physical exhaustion by long hours and heavy work. But even 
a horse, after the hardest day in the fields, will, relieved of 
his harness in the evening, roll with evident pleasure on the 
cool grass in the orchard pasture, and afterwards kick up his 
heels in play. 

The conception of the manual laborer as a work machine, 
whose sole function was to provide means for the existence and 
enjoyment of a leisure class, is at least as old as Greek civili- 
zation. Today there is unequal distribution of leisure, but 
leisure is so distributed in the United States that some of it 
reaches practically all laborers. In many cases it is the prime 
motive that gives the urge to work. In such cases, man endures 
that he may enjoy, and the quality of his uncontrolled enjoy- 
ment or leisure is apt to be governed in a large measure by the 
quality of his work, as it appeals to him. 

The social values of play and recreation have received re- 
newed attention in recent years because studies of environ- 
mental influences with reference to character formation have 
modified somewhat the generally accepted notions of the re- 
lative importance of heredity and environment. The fact is 
being more and more fully realized that environment must 
provide the stimulus and opportunity to develop fully the best 
inherited traits, and that wholesome stimulating environment 
may counteract untoward hereditary tendencies. (64: 274.) 
The careful records of the Glasgow Municipal Authorities pro- 
vide a striking confirmation of the newer theories of heredity. 
Six hundred thirty children from the worst possible stock and 
f roinmean and vile surroundings, were taken when very young 
from that city andwere sent, at the expense of the municipal- 
ity, to the country to be reared in ordinary homes. For years 
the record of these children was carefully kept and only twenty- 
three of the number went wrong. "A smaller number than 
if they had been the sons of ministers or professors," asserts 
the Poor Law Inspector of Glasgow. All this is but an exempli- 
fication of the old Scotch educational maxim : 

"Thraw the willow when it's green 
Between three and thirteen." 



/ 



(1: 36 and 62: 208-13.) In general, records of charitable 
institutions show that about 85 per cent of the children of 
ne'er-do-wells and criminals, who are placed in good homes 



ACTIVE RECOGNITION OF RECREATION 7 

in early childhood, develop into good citizens. Juvenile de- 
linquency was decreased nearly fifty per cent in the Stock 
Yards district of Chicago by the introduction of public play- 
grounds. (71: 370.) There is strong evidence that juvenile 
delinquency is about one-third a eugenic and two-thirds a 
euthenic problem. 

Lombroso says that where manufacturing crowds agri- 
culture, and still more where it displaces it, the number 
of crimes increases immediately. (68: 130-32.) In the 
United States from 1850 to 1900, the percentage of urban pop- 
ulation (8,000 and up) increased from 12.5 per cent to 33.1 
per cent. From 1880 to 1900 the urban population (2,500 and 
up) rose from 29.5 per cent to 46.3 per cent. The 1920 census 
gives the urban population (2,500 and up) as 51.9 per cent of 
the whole population of the United States. Almost one-tenth 
of the people live in New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago ; 
more than one-fourth live in 68 cities, each having a population 
of 100,000 or more. Kellicott states that prisoners per 100,000 
population increased during the years 1850 to 1904 from 29 to 
125 ; and that murders and homicides per million of the entire 
population nearly trebled from 1896 to 1911; also that the 
ratio of known insane to total population rose from 183 per 
100,000 in 1880 to 225 per 100,000 in 1903. He shows also 
that there was during these periods a rapid increase in de- 
fectives and unfit generally. (63: 29-33.) There is no impli- 
cation here that crime and social degeneracy are the results of 
the rapid growth of cities. However, the environmental 
changes have come so quickly that society has not been able to 
adjust itself. The heavy heterogeneous immigration during 
the periods considered has complicated the situation, for as 
D. F. Wilcox puts it in his "Great Cities in America," "every 
American city is, in its population elements, a world city." 
(118 : 9.) The influx of millions of foreigners from all parts of 
the world, who came into a strange and unusual social envi- 
ronment, has added to the confusion of the rapid urbanization, 
which was not at all understood by the native population. The 
large foreign element in a new environment, and the Americans 
themselves in a changing and mysterious environment, created 
a unique social problem, the solution of which is yet to be 
found. The problem seems to be largely one of environment. 
The essential nature of the peoples involved has not changed 
much in a half century. What people do, has changed. The en- 



8 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

vironment has changed most. Probably least effort has been 
expended in attempting to control the influences that play upon 
life continually. Heredity, function, and environment are all 
the factors of life that are known. They are the determining 
factors. (113: 3.) The labor problem, in its productive and 
financial aspects, is more on the public mind than eugenics, 
and eugenics until quite recently probably received more scien- 
tific and popular attention than euthenics. 

"Play is the most universal activity in the world." (85: 
110.) Recreation is an essential human need. They are both 
necessary to complete development and full efficiency. They 
know no race or nationality. Provision for their proper de- 
velopmental exercise is an important part of the problem of 
euthenics, especially in the modern city. 

One cannot imagine a social situation in which play and 
recreation are not, at least in part, cared for by the home. 
There is a tendency among social reformers to minimize the 
home or almost neglect its influence, with reference to certain 
social problems. Certainly social changes and conditions with- 
in recent years have taken many play and recreation activities 
from the home. 

Formal education has at last recognized the significance 
of developmental play and recreation in child and youth train- 
ing, and many of the former home activities in these lines 
have been transferred to the school, and utilized as educational 
material. 

The church is beginning to utilize play and recreation as 
aids in religious development and training. Industrialism, rec- 
ognizing the commercial and moral dangers of restoring the 
balance when released from monotonous work, often provides 
means of play and recreation for employees. Both of these 
agencies have detracted from the home's play and recreation 
strength. 

Private enterprise has been left virtually free to exploit 
nature's need of play and recreation, so commercialization is 
the characteristic and most common means of providing for 
these activities outside of the home. 

At the National Education Association, in 1902, in dis- 
cussing "The School as a Social Center," John Dewey said: 
"I believe that there is no force more likely to count in the 
general reform of social conditions than the practical recog- 
nition that in recreation there is a positive moral influence 



ACTIVE RECOGNITION OF RECREATION 9 

which it is the duty of the community to take hold of and 
direct." (27:381-2.) 

In 1906, the Playground and Recreation Association of 
America was organized at Washington, District of Columbia. 
It was at first called a playground association, and its inter- 
ests were almost entirely with playground development. The 
first annual Playground Congress met at Chicago, in 1907. 
There were two hundred delegates present from thirty cities. 
The proceedings of this congress are published in a ninety- 
five page volume. The proceedings of the second congress 
fill a volume of four hundred fifty-six pages. A conference 
of city officials was a feature of the second meeting. In Octo- 
ber, 1916, the eighth session of the association, called the 
National Recreation Congress, met at Grand Rapids, Michigan. 
There were present over seven hundred delegates from one 
hundred seventy-eight towns and cities. There were eighty 
persons on the program. Information concerning the work 
of the congress was sent to a selected list of 22,000 persons. 

Zueblin in his ''American Municipal Progress" states that 
a playground was established in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 
1872. (124: 297.) Rainwater in his "The Play Movement in 
the United States," after characterizing the "play movement" 
as a movement that "seeks to bring about adjustments through 
the organization of social activities," concludes that the move- 
ment began in the United States "with the sand piles of Boston 
in 1885." (89a : 11 and 27.) By 1900 ten cities had established 
playgrounds. From 1900 to 1906, twenty-six cities recognized 
recreational needs in the same way. (122a: 485.) The 1916 
Year Book of the Playground and Recreation Association of 
America shows that during 1915 there was playground and 
recreation work, regularly conducted under paid supervision, 
in 3,294 playground and recreation centers of 432 American 
cities. During July and August, 1915, the total average daily 
attendance at these centers was almost one million. (122: 383- 
386.) H. S. Curtis states that the city of Chicago, in 1904, 
through the Metropolitan Parks Commission, issued the first 
municipal playground plan in the United States. (21: 496.) 

The Index of the Reports of the National Education Asso- 
ciation for the first fifty years of its existence, 1857-1906, 
lists five topics on the various phases of play. These five topics 
cover thirty pages of the reports from 1898 to 1906, inclusive. 
The topic, "Playgrounds for the Poor in the Cities of Eng- 



10 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

land," fills five pages of the report for 1893. (74: 148.) The 
index of the reports for the half century have no other mention 
of playgrounds. Two articles, one in 1901, and one in 1902, 
deal specifically with the public school as a social center. 
(74: 177.) At present an equipped supervised playground is 
a recognized part of a complete school. Schools, colleges, and 
universities through their playgrounds, athletic fields, gymna- 
siums, stadiums, competetive games, and various organiza- 
tions for caring for student life outside of regular classrooms, 
recognize the seriousness of the leisure time problem. Phys- 
ical education is secondary in these various activities. 

The school house is in many places becoming a real social 
center, though the movement as we now know it began no 
farther back than 1907. The complexity and variety of activ- 
ities that are grouped around the social center, or as it is now 
styled, the community center movement, are shown in C. A. 
Perry's handbook, "Community Center Activities." (87.) 

The nation-wide diffusion of the community center idea 
has resulted in the organization of a National Community 
Center Association, which held its first conference at New York 
City in 1916, and its second conference at Chicago in April, 
1917. At the second conference there were present nearly five 
hundred registered delegates representing twenty-six states. 
(20: 12-14.) "The Community Center" was originally a 
monthly magazine issued by the association, "Published in the 
interest of Community Centers everywhere." The first official 
number appeared in June, 1917. (20.) At present "The Com- 
munity Center" is published bi-monthly by The National Com- 
munity Center Association, New York City. It calls itself 
"A news and discussion organ for all who are endeavoring to 
enrich life through community action." A wide range of activ- 
ities is fostered by this association. Many of them are entirely 
recreational. Though the recreation problem is not the whole 
problem of the community center, it is a large part of it. "The 
community center seeks to provide opportunities for the peo- 
ple to know how to live." (99: 15.) To do that recreation 
must be cared for. 

Community Service, Incorporated, which grew out of 
War Camp Community Service, an organization approved by 
the federal government during the World War, states in its 
charter that its object is, "the development in all American 
cities, through public and private agencies and by every 



ACTIVE RECOGNITION OF RECREATION 11 

appropriate means, of better moral and industrial con- 
ditions, health and welfare, play and recreation, higher and 
more adequate community and neighborhood expression, and 
a better social life-" (2a : 402.) 

In 1894, the National Municipal League was organized for 
the purpose of bringing about much needed reforms in the gov- 
ernment of American cities. In 1899, this league adopted a 
reform program called the Municipal Program. Parks and 
playgrounds were merely named among the attainable means 
by which a city should serve its citizens. (119: 225-26.) This 
is an early and an important theoretical recognition of the 
city's responsibility for providing for public leisure. 

Interest in all phases of city government has increased 
rapidly in the last twenty-five years. Twenty-five years ago 
not more than three or four of the largest universities and col- 
leges of the United States gave separate courses in municipal 
government. In 1908, such courses were offered in forty-six 
institutions ; in 1912, in sixty-four ; and in 1916, in ninety-five. 
(72a: 565-573.) Knight and Williams in their "Sources of 
Information on Play and Recreation," 1920, list sixty univer- 
sities, colleges, and normal schools in the United States that 
offer both regular and summer courses for recreation and com- 
munity leaders. (65a: 39-41.) "The Cardinal Principles of . 
Secondary Education" issued by a committee of the National 
Education Association in 1916, places "The worthy use of lei- 
sure" as one of the seven objectives in education. The rapid 
spread of the commission form of city government, and the 
city-manager plan, and the general tendency towards home 
rule for cities, mark great steps toward the recognition of 
local needs in all lines of municipal government. 

At the nineteenth annual convention of the League of 
American Municipalities, at New Orleans, in 1915, "Leisure 
Time — The Municipality's Responsibility," was an important 
topic of discussion, opened by the Superintendent of the Recrea- 
tion Commission of Detroit. (60: 19-24.) Many cities have, 
like Detroit, officially assumed at least part of this responsi- 
bility, in a more active way than by providing a few dignified 
display parks, libraries, and scientific museums. 

Recent state laws are in many cases more or less manda- 
tory. The Massachusetts law of 1912, provides that every / 
town in the state having a population of more than 5,000, must 
at the request of ten per cent of the voters submit the question 



/ 



12 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

of providing public playgrounds to the voters at the next town 
election. If a majority of the voters favors such provision, the 
town must "provide and thereafter maintain at least one public 
playground conveniently located and of such suitable size and 
equipment for the recreation and physical education of the 
minors of the town." (48 : 36-37.) This law has been accepted 
by scores of towns of Massachusetts. Several states have with- 
in the last few years passed laws permitting cities and towns 
to acquire land and to establish play and recreation centers, 
which are managed by recreation commissions or boards cre- 
ated by the cities. (2a: 416) The permissive state legisla- 
tion concerning recreation is in many respects similar to that 
which took place in the development and establishment of 
public, tax-supported education. 

The federal government through its national parks, its 
forest and game reserves, and its monuments, has provided 
some means for recreation for some of the people. Several 
states have established state parks for the same purpose. (81.) 
These facilities can be used only by a very small proportion 
of the people of the nation or of the states. Federal recognition 
of the necessity of caring for the recreational needs of the 
soldiers and sailors, is one of the outstanding social facts of 
the World War. Experience in meeting these needs is espe- 
cially valuable in aiding municipalities in solving their recre- 
ational problems. 

The municipality, of all governmental agencies, is the 
only one that has to any great extent seriously attempted to 
provide and control play and recreation facilities available for 
all its people. The dependence of the city upon the state has 
sometimes stood in the way of progressive city government. 
The fact must be kept in mind, however, that no city has at- 
tempted to provide and control all public play and recreation, 
as it provides and controls public education. There is no com- 
plete system of municipalized play and recreation in the United 
States. 

The Social Survey Bulletin of the Russell Sage Foundation 
Library for December, 1915, lists special recreation surveys 
of fifteen cities of the United States. The earliest was made in 
1912. (14: No. 9.) Scores of surveys made in the last ten 
years have dealt in part with various aspects of recreation. 
(14.) In 1914, the report of the "Recreational Inquiry Com- 
mittee of the State of California" was published by the state. 



ACTIVE RECOGNITION OF RECREATION 13 

This committee was appointed by authority of the state legis- 
lature. (97.) This survey is a study of all phases of recre- 
ation in the state, together with recommendations for meeting 
more fully the recreational needs of the people. 

Most of the numerous city planning commissions of recent 
years have given careful attention to the development of the 
recreational facilities of the communities studied. "A Public 
Recreation System for Newark/' is the title of a special re- 
port issued in 1915, by the city plan commission of Newark, 
New Jersey. The commission describes it as "a brief review, 
from the city-planning standpoint, of the value of a compre- 
hensive system of public recreation." (17: 1.) This com- 
mission also says, "Ample recreation facilities properly con- 
trolled are absolutely essential to the making of a healthy, 
law-abiding and efficient city." (17: 3.) The unpublished re- 
port of the Municipal Plans Commission of the city of Lincoln, 
Nebraska, first appointed in 1910, devoted in its final report, 
1914, about one-sixth of its attention, measured by pages, to a 
"Statement Concerning Playground and Recreation Center 
Phases of the Lincoln Plan." (94.) Though this last report 
has not resulted in any concerted movement for the betterment 
of recreational conditions, it is indicative of public interest in 
that direction. 

Community buildings, chiefly for recreation purposes, built 
with public or partly public funds, or by philanthropic and re- 
ligious organizations, are springing up in all parts of the 
country. In several states community buildings as war me- 
morials are authorized by law. 

In almost every community, the press, religious, social 
and philanthropic organizations, and people who work for the 
betterment of human living, are giving some attention to the 
improvement of some form of public recreation. There is gen- 
eral recognition of the problem as an all-year one, and that 
it applies to individuals of all ages. 

A study of the bibliographies of play and recreation dis- 
closes the fact that the problem is being approached from 
various angles by social workers, sociologists and educators 
as well as by the states, cities, and public and private corpora- 
tions. (124: 463-95; 14; 58: 170-184; 74; 49; 65a; 89a: 356- 
65.) A number of magazines such as "The Survey," and "The 
American City," give special attention to the discussion of pub- 



14 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

lie recreation problems. "The Playground" is the organ of the 
Playground and Recreation Association of America. 

Industrialism has discovered the monetary value of recre- 
ation. The recognition of this value, mingled with the desire 
to help people to live better, has led the management of many 
industrial establishments to provide wholesome leisure time 
facilities for their employees. Henderson in "Citizens in In- 
dustry" lists eighty-two cities in the United States in which 
one or more industrial establishments carry on important wel- 
fare work among their employees. He gives this as an incom- 
plete list. (51: 316-22.) It is sufficient, however, to show the 
prevalence of industrial belief in the efficacy of proper recrea- 
tion. These cities are distributed throughout the nation. 

This sketch of the development and growth of public and 
governmental interest in play and recreation may, perhaps, 
help picture the immensity and complexity of the problems 
involved. The facts here given show that there is in the 
United States an active recognition of the social values of play 
and recreation, and that there is a decided tendency to utilize 
these values for the individual, and for the social group. In 
the cities this tendency is more pronounced. 



CHAPTER III 

Factors Forcing Public Recognition of Play and Recreation 

The recent recognition of the value of play and recrea- 
tion as a definite and an important factor of the social prob- 
lem has been shown in the preceding chapter. 

Play and recreation have usually been considered as use- 
less and troublesome, but unavoidable residua of work, or as 
a preparation for work. Partial conception of their signifi- 
cance and full conception of the need of something, have re- 
sulted in sporadic and in many cases questionable and unde- 
velopmental means of providing for these activities. 

The failure to recognize play and recreation as funda- 
mental and essential human activities, which should be cared 
for by a definite institution on a level with the other great 
institutions of civilization, has caused much confusion of 
methods and means, and much waste of human effort. 

In this chapter an attempt is made to enumerate and 
discuss briefly some of the factors that are silently but force- 
fully making play and recreation matters of deepest public 
concern. 

Cities seem to be the real growing points of our civiliza- 
tion. They are the most favorable fields for the consideration 
of these problems. In fact, recent active recognition of the 
social values of play and recreation and the tendency of cities 
to assume the responsibility of providing for and directing 
these activities, point toward the municipal recognition and 
establishment of a new institution, which will be comparable 
in its universality to the public school, and which may finally 
lead to the nationalizing of play and recreation as an insti- 
tution. 

Why are play and recreation at present of such pressing 
public concern? These are times of social unrest — of world 
stress. The problem of relaxation is a world problem. Whole- 
some play was never more needed than at present. Wars 
seem to be a necessary means of relieving public stress. Per- 
haps, inventions, increase and pursuit of wealth and freedom, 
have taken man too rapidly away from old racial ways of 
doing and thinking. Intense mental and muscular applica- 



16 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

tion finds relief in the return to activities which use tracts 
that are old racially, and therefore satisfying in exercise. 
(86: 49 ff.) The complications and requirements of civiliza- 
tion have resulted in many perverted forms of these rever- 
sions. . Original tendencies and instincts necessary for the 
preservation, and complete development of human beings are 
exploited, perhaps as never before in the world's history. 
Democracy in its leveling process seems to be increasing leisure 
time, without adequately providing for its conservation. The 
social sex dance is an example. Dr. G. Stanley Hall calls 
the dance of the modern ball-room "a degenerate relict/' 
(46: 90.) All savages dance. Dancing has played an im- 
portant part in the training of the race. We know the value 
of the folk dance, of child dancing and of national dances. 
The early Christian bishops led the sacred dance around the 
altar. (46: 89.) According to some of the fathers of the 
early church, "the angels are always dancing, and the glor- 
ious company of the apostles is really a chorus of dancers." 
(106: 800.) 

A monstrous perversion of the dance, called the "pros- 
perity crawl," practiced in the winter of 1916-17, in the ultra- 
fashionable restaurants of New York City, is described by a 
newspaper reporter as follows : "On a little floor into which 
a subway guard wouldn't try to squeeze more than three 
dozen couples, six dozen cram themselves and try to dance. 
Six dozen couples, filled with food, booze, and a determina- 
tion to be joyful, though the hour is after midnight, and the 
air is thick enough for flying, make a wonderful spectacle 
of themselves. Most of the dancing they do is in their minds. 
If they move their legs, someone else's leg intervenes. On 
the least crowded nights it is possible to dance a little (hori- 
zontally for the most part) and that is where the crawl comes 
in. From the surrounding tables the picture is like nothing 
so much as a can of sardines seeking to express its soul, or 
a bucket full of yeast just going to work." (4.) This is a 
ridiculous exaggeration. However, there is a decided tendency 
towards excess and degeneracy in most social dances. 

Much crime and most juvenile delinquency are undoubt- 
edly the results of perverted play and recreation. (59: 307.) 
The artificial environment of the modern city prevents nor- 
mal instinctive development. Life means action. Unless pro- 



FACTORS FORCING RECOGNITION 17 

vided for and directed, this activity is apt to run off into hurt- 
ful excesses and perverted forms. It seems that man has 
always preyed upon man more or less. Civilization seems to 
have changed the forms only. Government at its best tries 
to prevent it. 

This is an age of almost painfully awakened social con- 
sciousness. People have never before known so much about 
one another as they know now. The social problem, as defined 
by Charles A. Ellwood, is very simple in its statement. Pro- 
fessor Ellwood says, "Some of us at least, are beginning to 
perceive that the social problem is now, what it has been in 
all ages, namely, the problem of the relation of men to one 
another. It is the problem of human living together." (30: 
13.) The increasing complexity "of human living together" is 
characteristic of this age. In the United States, a heterogen- 
eous people makes the situation especially aggravating. The 
control and the conservation of play and recreation, stands 
out as one of the important, unsolved and difficult factors of 
the social problem. It is not because of its newness that the 
recreation question is now attracting public attention. Civi- 
lized peoples have always worked and rested from work. In 
fact, with the race, play, probably in order of time, came be- 
fore work. 

Congestion of population tends to make the problem of 
leisure acute. Whether or not we hold with Lombroso that 
"the very congestion of population itself gives an irresistible 
impulse toward crime and immorality," (68: 53.) we must 
admit that congestion does in every way complicate the social 
problem. Statistics prove that most crimes increase with 
density. (68: Chapter V, and 8: 61-109.) Dr. Reeder states 
that out of 130,000 children in the reformatories of the United 
States, 98 per cent come from cities, towns and villages. He 
says, "The delinquent child of today is the product of city 
and town life." (91:160.) 

Excessive urbanization has been called a deadly disease. 
It is said to have killed the Roman Empire. We have greater 
resisting power than had Rome ; but the disease is essentially 
the same. (32: 78-81.) In 1787, Jefferson predicted danger 
and corruption for America with the development of large 
cities. (61.) 

Closely related to the problem of congestion is that of 



18 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

the passing of the owned home and the coming of the tene- 
ment, the apartment house, and the family hotel. In 1910, 
of the fifty cities of 100,000 or more, Spokane, Washington, 
was the only one in which less than one-half of all homes were 
rented. In thirty -nine of these fifty cities fully three-fourths 
of the homes were rented; and in sixteen, more than three- 
fourths. In five of them more than four-fifths were rented. 
In New York City as a whole, 88.3 per cent of all homes were 
rented; in Manhattan only 2.9 per cent were owned. (Ill: 
1295-1314.) 

A dwelling house is defined in the United States census, 
as a place in which one or more persons regularly sleep. In 
the United States as a whole, in 1910, there were in urban 
communities, 5.9 persons to a dwelling; in rural communities, 
4.7 persons; in Chicago, 8.9; in New York City as a whole, 
15.6; in Manhattan, 30.9. (Ill: 1288.) 

The 1920 census will probably show, for the city at least, 
a decrease in owned homes, and a large increase in the num- 
ber of persons to a dwelling. In recent years, there has been 
in most large cities, great activity in the erection of apart- 
ment houses and family hotels. In 1916, twenty apartment 
houses were built in Omaha, valued at $910,000 ; and in Lin- 
coln, twenty-two valued at over $800,000. The Lincoln houses, 
built in 1916, have a capacity of two hundred eighty-two 
families, and were rented before completion. (9 and 78.) 

The growth of family hotels, apartment houses, tenements 
and flats, means yardless homes, and in most cases, a handi- 
cap for indoor play space for children. In 1915, there were 
734,500 children in New York City between the ages of five 
and fourteen who had no outdoor play space at home. (92: 
10.) A recreation survey of Kansas City disclosed the fact 
that in fifty-four residential blocks, selected from four typi- 
cal sections of the city, but seven and one-fourth per cent of 
the ground space privately owned, was usable for play. ( 102 : 
24.) In the same fifty-four blocks at a given time 1,528 
children were observed playing outdoors, and 71 per cent were 
on the streets and in the alleys. (102: 19.) Surveys in gen- 
eral show that more than thirty per cent of the population of 
cities is in districts where there is absolutely no yard space. 

A rented, yardless and gardenless home offers little to hold 
the children or the adults of the family, in the way of play 



FACTORS FORCING RECOGNITION 19 

and recreation. "The protection and care of a piece of property 
makes for thoughtfulness and steadiness, individualizes." 
(100: 89.) The home just described offers little chance for 
play, for recreation, or for cultivating an avocation. Such a 
home tends to become "a sleeping box and eating den — too 
often no more." (24: 3.) Congestion and the impersonal 
industrial system seem to develop the impersonal home. 

The facts substantiate Woodrow Wilson's statement that, 
"The eight-hour day now undoubtedly has the sanction of the 
judgment of society in its favor." (44: 85-86.) Eight hours 
is a legal work day in public employment in twenty-four states 
and in all federal labor. (44: 82.) A study of eighty-nine 
principal trades in forty-eight cities, conducted by the United 
States Bureau of Labor in 1914, showed a gradual shorten- 
ing of the labor day from 1907 to 1914. (55.) Many large 
industrial establishments are voluntarily shortening the hours 
of labor of their employees. (55 and 3.) Reliable authority 
affirms that over 100,000 laborers were put on an eight-hour 
day during the eighteen months ending January, 1917. 
"Sooner or later the eight-hour day will be universal," many 
employers are quoted as saying. (44: 85.) In 1917, at a 
meeting of the Building Trades Department of the American 
Federation of Labor, resolutions were introduced suggesting 
a six-hour day for all unions of building mechanics, as a solu- 
tion of the unemployment problem. (44: 85.) During the 
World War, W. N. Polakov of the War Shipping Board 
asserted, that "if America seriously sets out to eliminate all 
the friction in her industrial system, we may expect a four, or 
perhaps a two hour day." (88a: 209-10.) In many indus- 
tries, especially in the heated season, the forty-eight labor 
hours per week are reduced to forty-four or less. Holidays 
and half holidays are becoming more and more common. (3: 
440-5.) 

Reduction of hours of labor usually means increase in 
hours of leisure. Leisure, unprotected and unprovided for, is 
apt to be dangerous, especially for those whose labor is monot- 
onous, and for those who have not been trained to clearly 
distinguish between recreation and dissipation. There is wide 
difference of opinion, and variance of apparent facts with 
reference to the last statement. W. D. Scott says that em- 
ployers fear the effects of long hours of freedom from toil 



20 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

and that one of the problems of the American people is to 
train up the rising generation, so that they may make the best 
use of the increasing hours of leisure. (101: 219-20.) An- 
other authority asserts that shorter hours of labor and in- 
creased wages merely give depraved men and women new op- 
portunities for self indulgence. (62: 310.) Josephine Gold- 
mark masses the facts to show that short hours of labor re- 
sult in better health and a higher moral tone of the workers. 
(42: Part I, 278-284, and Part II, 286-290.) Undoubtedly, 
under proper environment more leisure would be beneficial. 
Under present urban home conditions as have been described, 
and with the general public disregard of the care of leisure, 
enlarged leisure certainly carries with it moral danger. 

Children's hours of labor are very short, or are reduced 
to none at all. Their hours of play are long and usually un- 
cared for. Public play is not generally considered a public 
responsibility, so play as well as leisure is exploited. As the 
child labor problem approaches solution, the problem of child 
idleness becomes more important and difficult. (115: 78-79.) 
Children spend about one-eighth of the hours of the year in 
the public schools. Compulsory education laws force them to 
attend. Child labor laws prevent them from working out- 
side the home. The home furnishes very little for them to do. 
They go to the streets and to commercial places for play and 
recreation. Investigations show that from twenty to twenty- 
five per cent of the persons attending moving picture shows 
are children under sixteen years of age. Superintendent 
Francis is probably right when he says, "The greatest danger 
this nation faces today comes from the unoccupied time of 
her boys and girls." (36 : 99.) 

The rapid increase in wealth and of the leisure that goes 
with it, together with the shorter labor day, have been im- 
portant factors in developing commercial recreation. The com- 
mercial exploitation of leisure is a matter of serious public con- 
cern. Only an insignificant per cent of the people of large cities 
are reached by public agencies of recreation. Probably not 
less than ninety-five per cent of the public frequent commer- 
cial places. (59: 317.) A few specific cases of this commer- 
cialization will illustrate the situation. 

The motion picture business is twenty-five years old. It 
is classed by some authorities as the fourth largest industry 



FACTORS FORCING RECOGNITION 21 

in the country. In November, 1916, a new motion picture 
company was organized in New York City with a reported 
capitalization of $9,000,000. Charlie Chaplin's salary was 
reported in Harper's Weekly in May, 1916, at $13,500 a week. 
Newspaper reports asserted that Chaplin had sold his pictures 
a year in advance for one million dollars. These are press 
exaggerations, without doubt, but public interest in the ludi- 
crous work of Chaplin would justify an enormous expense for 
his services. It is estimated that over $400,000,000 are spent 
annually by the people of the United States for admission to 
moving picture shows. Ninety-nine per cent of the pictures 
shown in the public motion picture houses of this country are 
censored or passed by the National Board of Review of Mo- 
tion Pictures of New York City, a non-official board supported 
chiefly by film producers and others financially interested in 
the motion picture business. (95: 20-21.) 

The gate receipts from the 162,859 spectators of the five 
games of the World Championship Baseball Series, in 1916, 
were $385,590. The share of each winning player was $3,826, 
and of each losing player, $2,715. (121: 412.) Estimates 
based on the figures of the Secretary of the National Associa- 
tion, place the sum paid out or invested in organized base- 
ball in the United States, in 1916, at $34,000,000. 

The Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, the great bil- 
liard equipment company of America, states in its advertising 
matter that there are 400,000 billiard tables in the public bil- 
liard halls of the United States, on which over 2,000,000 
people play daily. 

Some of the factors that have to do with the decadence 
of the home, or at least of the home as it was a half century 
ago have been discussed. The rehabilitation in the city, of 
the home of the past, which was essentially the rural home, 
is a physical and social impossibility. The old ideas and ideals 
of the home must be reconstructed, really remade, to meet 
new conditions. Failure in the recognition of this fact, has 
made the recreation problem much more acute and danger- 
ous. The city home is not doing and cannot do the things 
the home used to do. 

The public school is burdened almost to the point of ^~ 
breaking, by attempting to do everything that seems to be 
needed to be done. Undoubtedly some of the early develop- 



22 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

mental stages of play and recreation can be best cared for 
by the public school, but even the ideal school can not be ex- 
pected to solve the adult side of the recreation problem. 

The readjustment of the church in its attempts to meet 
the present social situation is in a great measure due to a 
shifting of leisure. Recreation has gone out of the home. 
The institutional church is chiefly an effort to control leisure 
for the church. The multiplicity of social and fraternal or- 
ganizations complicates the problem of recreation for all, be- 
cause they are more or less exclusive, and are apt to tend 
toward sportiness and snobbery. (98: 251.) 

Society is beginning to realize the fact that while labor 
is hedged about and protected by numerous laws, and social 
regulations, there is scant attention given to the conservation 
and protection of leisure. Physical injury is evident, so we 
have working-men's compensation laws. Moral injury 
through the perversion of leisure is none the less real, and 
often more serious. There is great need of protecting society 
from the immoral tendencies of commercial recreation. 

Easy and rapid means of communication bring most rural 
communities in contact with city conditions. The prestige 
of the big city is in no field more powerful than in that of re- 
creation. Practically every village, town and city in the United 
States is affected by New York's morality, through films 
passed by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. 

The machines of industry are making machines of men. 
The intense crushing specialization and the forced efficiency 
of industrialism make recreation doubly a necessity. The in- 
crease and seriousness of occupational or industrial diseases 
have kept pace with the developments of the industrial revo- 
lution. (112: 3.) "With each new form of mechanical in- 
vention which calls for skilled manual labor, some new occu- 
pational neurosis arises." (22: 45.) The tension of dull 
monotony must be relieved. Wholesome recreation makes bet- 
ter workers. Industry is beginning to recognize this, so pro- 
gressive establishments provide suitable recreation for their 
employees. 

There are many other factors that are silently forcing 
the significance of play and recreation into public conscious- 
ness. The weakening of the grip of the church gives over 
more of the time of the young especially to perverted forms 



FACTORS FORCING RECOGNITION 23 

of public recreation. The press with its description of social 
and recreational excesses, and the sex novel are really forms 
of commercial exploitations of leisure. The passing of the 
American saloon raises the question whether some of the rec- 
reational features that have made it so powerful are not worth 
preserving. 

Specialization without due regard to individual adapta- 
tion, and economic pressure, have placed thousands of people 
in vocations for which they are unfitted, and in which they 
are unhappy. With these persons the joy of life must be 
sought outside of life's work. (26: 240.) Numerous organ- 
izations and movements are drawing people away from home. 
Nearly all homes seem to be interested in outside plans for 
social improvement. _ 

The craving for play and recreation is as fundamental 
and natural, and its satisfaction is as necessary as the crav- 
ing for, and the satisfaction of food. Another institution or 
agency of civilization must surely emerge from the social com- 
plex to definitely provide for this fundamental need. The need 
is greatest in the cities. They are slowly meeting it. Bryce 
declared in 1888, that the government of cities was the one 
conspicuous failure of the United States. (13:637.) "Amer- 
ican cities have made more progress in the direction of clean 
and efficient government within the last ten years, than they 
were able to make during the preceding fifty," so wrote Dr. 
Munro in 1916. (72: 1.) Reforms have generally come in 
city government as a necessity. 

The chief factors forcing public recognition of play and 
recreation are here restated. The strains due to modern in- 
tensity of life have taken perverted forms in seeking relief. 
Congestion prevents normal instinctive development, so the 
problem of "human living together" becomes more complex 
and difficult. More than fifty per cent of the people in the 
United States live in cities having a population of 2,500 or 
above. In the city, the home with its former activities is pas- 
sing away, and with it home play and recreation facilities. 
The shorter labor day gives more leisure for adults, and the 
seasonal public school, the changed home, and child labor laws, 
make child idleness a serious problem. Commercial recrea- 
tion agencies prey upon these enlarged play and leisure pe- 
riods. The prestige of the big city carries much of its recrea- 



24 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

tion into small towns. Municipal governments are being 
forced by social maladjustments to recognize, and to provide 
for the care of public play and leisure. In doing this they are 
slowly developing an institution for the care of these activ- 
ities. The following chapter points out concretely how this 
institution is being evolved in some typical cities. 



CHAPTER IV 

Municipal Recognition and Administration of Play and 

Recreation 

The political upheavals that have, in many cases, been 
necessary to remove the more glaring defects of municipal- 
ities, and the social complications described in chapters ii and 
iii, have disclosed latent, much needed governmental possibil- 
ities. The term public utilities has come to have a progressive 
meaning. The paternalism of the nation is being far out- 
stripped by what may be called the maternalism of the city. 
Municipal market, municipal laundry, municipal nursery, 
municipal swimming pool, and municipal playground call up 
some of the maternal functions assumed by American cities 
in recent years. (30: 86 130.) This invitation, issued by the 
Board of Playground Commissioners of Los Angeles, illustrates 
a new municipal function: "The City of Los Angeles offers 
for the free use of the general public at Recreation Center, 
a finely equipped building with a gymnasium, bath, lockers, 
club rooms, library, dance hall, bowling alleys, wrestling and 
boxing room, handball court, playgrounds, and furnishes free 
of charge trained leaders in the gymnasium, club work, dra- 
matics, and other recreational activities." "The City Recre- 
ation Center Building is open to the public from 2:00 p. m. 
until 9:30 p. m. daily except Sunday, and persons are cor- 
dially invited to use the Recreation Center facilities." (18: 
1 and 4.) 

Cities that have adopted a definite recreation manage- 
ment program have usually approached the problem through 
one or more of three administrative departments: 1. The 
Board of Education ; 2. The Park Board ; 3. A distinct depart- 
ment of the city government, usually called Recreation Com- 
mission. (7: 79-99, and 60: 24.) 

In placing these activities under the management of the 
school authorities there is danger that the formalism and 
over-supervision of the public schools, may tend to reduce 
them to a deadening fixed system, and that professionalism 
will tend to magnify the interest of the child, to the neglect 
of adult needs and interests. However, the wider view of 



y 



26 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

school education, resulting largely from the socializing ten- 
dencies of recent years, may somewhat counteract these forces. 

Park departments have the advantage of the control of 
open spaces, and of many other important recreational facil- 
ities. They are, however, apt to be handicapped by traditional 
notions of the purpose and uses of public parks. (60: 19-24.) 
The still common tendency to consider parks as the beauty 
spots of cities, and their chief value their influence upon peo- 
ple who look at them, stands in the way of the full recogni- 
tion of their recreational worth by park authorities. Park 
policemen, in large cities, still spend too much of their time 
in keeping people from using the parks. 

A Recreation Commission, freed from the corrupting in- 
fluences of city politics, and composed of citizens representing 
the important interests and institutions of the city, would 
probably have a wider vision of the meaning and purposes 
of public play and recreation than any ordinary departmental 
board or committee. 

There is a tendency in recent years to place the public 
recreational activities of a city in the hands of one person, 
usually called Superintendent of Recreation, who is appointed 
by, and responsible to a Recreation Board or Commission. 
Detroit, Michigan, is an example of this type of organization. 
Because it furnishes one of the best cases of this recent de- 
velopment and for other reasons to be discussed later, De- 
troit's system of recreation will be described here with consid- 
erable detail. 

In 1914, Detroit amended its charter, creating a Recrea- 
tion Commission. This amendment was adopted by 21,187 
for, 14,936 against. (90: 9.) The first section is as follows: 
"There shall be a Board of Commissioners in the City of De- 
troit known as 'The Recreation Commission/ Said Commission 
shall consist of ten members — five citizens of Detroit appointed 
by the Mayor and the following five members : The Superinten- 
dent of Schools, the Park Commissioner, the Librarian of the 
Public Library, the Police Commissioner and the Commissioner 
of Public Works." (90: 36.) The personnel of "the Recreation 
Commission" is significant. The ex-officio members represent 
the social forces of the city that are very closely related to the 
play and recreation problem. They also give permanence and 
stability to the Commission because of the probable long ten- 



y 



MUNICIPAL RECOGNITION 27 

ure of their major positions, and because of their technical 
knowledge of public affairs and public needs. The five un- 
official citizens give the check which specialization is apt to 
need. 

The duties and powers of the Commission are pointed out 
in Sections 2 and 3 of the amendment. (90: 36.) In gen- 
eral, they are "to manage, direct and care for whatever pro- 
visions are made by the city" for play and recreation, and to 
inspect as provided by city ordinances "all forms of commer- 
cial recreation for which licenses are required by the city." 
The Commission is given power, unless "vetoed" by the Board 
of Education to use school buildings and grounds for play 
and recreation purposes without expense to the Board of Edu- 
cation. It is also given power "with the consent of the Park 
Commissioner" to use park property, and to equip and care 
for other recreation facilities in the parks. 

An important power with reference to commercial recre- 
ation is vested in the Commission. All licenses for commercial 
places "shall be issued only on the written recommendation 
of said Recreation Commission; that such a recreation place 
for which license is sought is furnishing recreation of a whole- 
some and moral quality." (90: 36.) 

The funds supporting the work of the Commission are 
appropriated and turned over to it by the Common Council. 
The money is raised by an annual city tax "to provide for the 
establishment and extension of a recreation system under the 
Commission." Bonds may be issued by the city for purchas- 
ing or erecting buildings "for the further extension of the 
recreation system under said Commission." (90: 36.) 

"The Commission may appoint a recreation superinten- 
dent and one chief assistant, and such other directors and 
caretakers as are necessary for the proper conduct of an ade- 
quate recreation system for Detroit, all appointees except the 
superintendent and chief assistant to be subject, however, to 
the act providing for a system of civil service for the city 
of Detroit." (90: 36.) Such is the amendment provision for 
the selection of the recreation faculty and helpers in this city 
system of play and recreation. 

One purpose in giving this detailed description of De- 
troit's recreation system is to bring out the fact that Detroit 
is building up a scheme of public recreation that in its legal 



"n 



28 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

framework resembles the municipal public school system as it 
exists in American cities. Even the method of selecting the 
Recreation Commission does not differ from that used in the 
selection of members of school boards in Chicago, New York 
and San Francisco. (72: 361.) The general functions of 
boards of education may be grouped under three heads : 1. To 
provide the school plant; 2. To purchase supplies of various 
kinds; 3. To appoint a superintendent and assistants. (72: 
369.) These things are done for recreation by the Recrea- 
tion Commission of Detroit. The provisions for financial sup- 
port are much the same in Detroit's public recreation system, 
as in municipal public school systems. School boards do not 
provide and control all formal education of the cities, how- 
ever, they do in most systems, have some supervision of pri- 
vate and parochial education. This is somewhat comparable 
to Detroit's inspection of commercial recreation. 

The American people have often been accused of law neg- 
lect. Much needed and progressive legislation has been placed 
on statute books, but not enforced. Charles A. Ellwood tells 
us that we have "a childish, almost an absurd faith in the 
power of governmental machinery, and in the power of the 
ballot to work all sorts of social wonders." (5: 200.) De- 
troit's recreation system was adopted by a majority of 6,000 
in a total vote of 36,000 citizens. Has it been administered? 
If so, how? 

This introduces a third reason for devoting so much space 
to Detroit's recreation plan. The Recreation Commission was 
organized in December, 1914. The work of the Commission 
for the first year is published under the title, "The Recreation 
Commission of the City of Detroit Report at the end of the 
First Year of its Organization. January 1, 1916." (90.) This 
report shows what the Commission accomplished during the 
first year of its existence and what plans were formulated for 
the following year. In a forty page pamphlet are given: The 
roster of the Commission, with its four committees — adminis- 
tration, finance, licenses, real estate ; the roster of the staff — 
174 in the summer, and 50 in the winter season; map show- 
ing the distribution of the recreation activities of the Com- 
mission; report of the President to the Common Council; re- 
port of the Superintendent to the Commission; illustrations 
of play and recreation activities ; special activities ; attendance 



MUNICIPAL RECOGNITION 29 

at summer playgrounds; financial statement and budget for 
the year beginning January 1, 1916. 

Although the commission was organized in December, 
1914, funds were not available until July 1, 1915, so the actual 
organized work as reported was carried on for only six 
months, July 1, 1915, to January 1, 1916. (90.) This fact 
should be considered in measuring the Commission's work, 
also it should be kept in mind that the Commission "took over 
from various city departments activities which had heretofore 
been conducted by them. With these changes in administra- 
tion and a reconsideration and broadening of the scope of the 
work, many new problems were presented; consequently a 
very large part of the work of the Commission was of a cre- 
ative character, for which no precedent existed." (90: 8.) 

A few of the general features of the Report will be con- 
sidered here. 

Finances of the Recreation Commission 

July 1, 1915, to January 1, 1916 
(All amounts are here given in even hundreds) 

Total appropriation for one year $169,500 

Total expense for six months 65,600 

Salaries — Administration 4,000 

Supervision 1,200 

Playground Direction 28,600 

Swimming Supervision 2,700 

School Garden 300 

Janitors and Caretakers 9,800 

Athletic Supplies 1,600 

Industrial Supplies 300 

Equipment — New School Playgrounds 4,100 

New Library Playground , 100 

Other New Playgrounds „ 900 

Playground Improvements 5,700 

Lockers, Benches, etc 400 

Medical Services 300 

Laundry Service (Bath House) 400 

Field Day 1,500 

The above items are selected from the financial statement 
in order to show the expenses of the system, and to point 



SO MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

out the activities emphasized. The budget for the fiscal year 
beginning July 1, 1916, calls for $129,900. (90: 38-40.) 

Supervised Summer Playgrounds 

Total number of play centers 69 

Average weekly attendance 91,400 

Total attendance 1,015,000 

Cost per individual child per day 3 cents 

Daily programs, 10:00 a. m. until dark: 

Young children's activities in -early periods. 

Older children's activities in afternoons. 

Adult activities in evenings. (90: 14 and 37.) 

The summer playground season closed August 21, with 
the first annual Recreation Day program. "This program was 
shaped to give expression to the fundamental recreational 
instincts, athletic competition, group exercises, dramatics and 
dancing." (90: 17 and 31.) 

Commercial Recreation 
The Superintendent asks for "adequate funds to insure 
intelligent and constructive supervision" of commercial recre- 
ation. The allowance for this purpose for the first year was 
$1,900; the second year budget calls for $3,500. (90: 28.) 

Training of Play and Recreation Leaders 
The Superintendent organized a normal training class 
in the theory and practice of play, as soon as the work of the 
Commission was established. A definite course in the train- 
ing of recreation and play workers was at once put into opera- 
tion. (90: 12.) 

In his recommendations for the year, 1916-17, the Sup- 
erintendent urges the Commission to increase the salary ap- 
propriation, so that he may be able "to employ suitably trained 
and able supervisors to assist in directing and training the 
employees of the staff." (90: 25-26.) He also urges the 
adoption of a graduated salary schedule, which will allow 
an annual increase in the salaries of efficient employees so that 
the Commission can develop and hold capable recreation 
leaders. (90:26.) 

The Civil Service Commission of Detroit, during the year 
1915, established standard minimum qualifications for direc- 
tors and play leaders. These requirements include general 



MUNICIPAL RECOGNITION 31 

education, physical fitness, and training in the theory and 
practice of play direction. (90: 26.) 

The first report of Detroit's Recreation Commission, in 
form and in methods of administration resembles in many 
ways the reports of boards of education of city schools. De- 
troit's Recreation Commission seems to be striving to estab- 
lish a municipal recreation system — a system that will finally 
control and direct all public recreation of the city. 

The city of Los Angeles by a charier amendment estab- 
lished a Playground Department in 1911. This Department 
is under the management and control of a board of five com- 
missioners styled the Board of Playground Commissioners. 
(96: 54; 48: 90-91.) This Board is appointed by the Mayor, 
subject to the confirmation of the Council. There are no ex- 
officio members. Their duties and powers are much the same 
as those of the Detroit Commission, except that the Los An- 
geles Board has nothing to do with commercial recreation. 
In general, the recreational activities provided by the two are 
about the same in kind. (96.) Two special features of Los 
Angeles deserve mention. The Board of Playground Com- 
missioners operates a Summer Camp in the San Bernardino 
Mountains, 75 miles from Los Angeles. This camp of twenty- 
three acres, is really a city-conducted outing home in the 
mountains. (96: 41.) Large well ventilated cabins provide 
comfortable shelter. Campers are taken in groups during the 
hot season, under the supervision of an official director. There 
are boy groups, groups of girls and women, and family groups. 
The city of Los Angeles has been providing for all decent 
citizens who care to take advantage of it, a two weeks' outing 
in this camp for $7.50 for each person. This includes trans- 
portation, food and housing. (96: 41.) Almost 1,000 per- 
sons took advantage of this outing in 1916. 

In order to keep in close touch with neighborhood recre- 
ational conditions and needs, the Los Angeles Commissioners 
require a director to reside on each city playground. (96: 47.) 
For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, the Los Angeles 
Board spent $63,600 for recreation. (96: 24.) 

In Cleveland, play and recreation are cared for by the 
Department of Public Welfare through the Sub-Division of 
Parks and Public Grounds. This Sub-Division includes parks, 



32 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

boulevards, forestry, playgrounds, baths, bath houses, dance 
pavilions, recreation and park refreshments. (6.) The chief 
officer of the Sub-Division is Commissioner of Parks and 
Public Grounds. The important inferior officers are Park 
Engineer, City Forester, Supervisor of Recreation, and Sup- 
erintendents and Physical Directors of Baths and Gymnasi- 
ums. 

Cleveland's system is very complicated. The recreational 
activities permitted and provided by the authorities do not 
differ widely from those of other cities. The outdoor facilities 
of the parks are excellent. There is a lack of facilities for 
indoor play and recreation. Two special features of the parks 
should be noticed. Cleveland park management provides ade- 
quate dancing facilities with a charge of three cents for each 
couple for each dance. In 1914, 1,300,000 persons partici- 
pated in this recreation in the two park pavilions. (6: 9-11.) 
In Cleveland parks all refreshment stands are operated by the 
park management. (6: 8-9.) 

The Superintendent of Recreation of Dayton, Ohio, is 
a divisional officer under the Director of Public Welfare. In 
the summer of 1916, eighteen playgrounds were managed 
by the Superintendent. Eleven of these were financed by the 
Playgrounds and Gardens Association, and seven by the city. 
(93: 1.) 

The Board of Park Commissioners of Springfield, Massa- 
chusetts, has charge of the city's recreational work. This in- 
cluded in 1916, fifty-seven parks, eighteen playgrounds, two 
swimming pools and six social centers. (83: 6 and 12.) A 
common attitude of park officials toward the recent develop- 
ments of municipal recreation management is shown by the 
following extract from the Park Commissioners' Report for 
1914: "Last winter an effort was made to have Springfield 
adopt a new commission — that of Recreation. One of the 
greatest sources of foolishness and waste of energy in the 
United States at the present time — and for several years past 
— is the tendency to create new laws and regulations which 
have no solid reasons for existence save in the minds of the 
persons originating them." (84: 20.) The new commission 
was not established. However, the Park Commissioners ap- 
pointed a Director of Recreation. This was in 1913. In the 
last report of the Board (1916) there is clear evidence of a 



MUNICIPAL RECOGNITION 



33 



clash between the Park Board and the School Board with ref- 
erence to the distribution of educational and recreational ac- 
tivities. (83: 13.) 

Springfield makes provision in the parks for out-of-door 
social dancing, on low uncovered platforms. This form of 
dancing is very popular. (83: 12, and 84: 11 and 23.) 

Chicago has a complicated system of parks, boulevards, 
municipal playgrounds and municipal bathing beaches. The 
city of Chicago has spent more than $30,000,000 on its park 
systems. (124: 274.) 

The South Park System of Chicago consists of twenty- 
four parks and nineteen boulevards. (5: 8.) The following 
list of conveniences and facilities provided by the System will 
suffice to show the activities of these "most humanly useful 
parks." (5: 46.) 



Golf Courses 3 

Tennis Courts 359 

Baseball Diamonds 76 

Football Grounds 26 

Skating Houses 15 

Swimming Pools 11 

Boat Houses 4 

Shelters 19 

Inside Gym., Men 11 

Inside Gym., Women 11 

Outside Gym., Men 18 

Outside Gym., Women 18 



Running Tracks 15 

Children's Playgrounds .... 19 

Assembly Halls 11 

Reading Rooms 11 

Club Rooms, Men 13 

Club Rooms, Women 28 

Bathing Beaches 3 

Private Showers, Men 41 

Open Showers, Men 242 

Private Showers, Women.. 100 
Open Showers, Women 78 



A further consideration of methods of management, and 
of the reports of play and recreation officials of cities, would 
not show wide variation from the types described. In the 
conduct of play and recreation, most of the cities through 
their reports show duplication of activities and facilities, and 
lack of coordination in management. There is often magnifi- 
cation of the importance of details, or of minor unrelated activ- 
ities. In some cases these reports clearly show lack of both 
training and vision on the part of officials. There is generally 
little effort made by cities through their recreation officials 
to inspect, supervise or control commercial recreation. J. R. 
Richards, Superintendent of Sports and Recreation, South Park 
Commission, Chicago, says, "Many of our social problems are 



S 



/ 



34 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

nothing but manifestations of the effects of commercial rec- 
reation in a social organism that offers no decent and adequate 
substitute." (98: 246.) Richards also holds that "dividends 
and not human development are the chief concern of com- 
mercialized recreation." 

In December, 1915, the Board of Estimate and Appor- 
tionment of New York City, appointed a Committee on Rec- 
reation. In a Report, October, 1916, this Committee listed the 
four tasks set for itself. They are as follows : 

"1. Working out a comprehensive plan of development for 
recreation activities in New York City. 

"2. The co-ordinating of the work of various public 
boards affecting recreation in New York City. 

"3. The co-ordination of public and private agencies. 

"4. Making recommendations on the budget and on all 
current matters referred to it by various public boards in order 
to see that a co-ordinated plan for recreation development 
is being carried out, and thus to prevent the city from taking 
steps which will have to be retraced." (92 : 7.) 

This Committee is making a most comprehensive study 
of the recreation conditions and needs of New York City. In 
1915, that city spent $2,660,400 for recreation. (92: 15 and 
22.) 

Throughout the country in general, there is a marked 
movement toward placing playgrounds and recreation work 
under municipal management. In 1916, 237 of the 371 cities 
reporting the authorities managing public play and recrea- 
tion, to the Playground and Recreation Association of Amer- 
ica, were wholly or in part administering these activities them- 
selves; that is, 63.8 per cent of the cities had some form of 
municipal control. That was an increase of 6.8 per cent dur- 
ing the year. In forty-two cities playground and recreation 
centers were maintained by recreation commissions; in four- 
teen cities by playground and recreation departments or divis- 
ions. (122: 492.) School boards provided these facilities in 
seventy cities; park boards in thirty-one; city councils or 
boards of selectmen in nine; departments of public welfare 
in two; departments of parks and public property in three; 
and municipal playground committees in eight. (122: 492-93.) 

Play and recreation were managed by a combination of 
municipal departments in a number of cities. The following 
are common combinations: 



MUNICIPAL RECOGNITION 35 

Park department and board of education. 

Board of education and board of recreation. 

Board of education and city. 

Park department and board of recreation. 

Department of parks and playgrounds, board of educa- 
tion and board of health. 

Board of public works and other city departments. (122: 
493.) 

Private management of play and recreation was reported 
from forty-five cities. This was chiefly by women's clubs, 
civic clubs and associations, improvement clubs, parent-teacher 
associations, home-school leagues, Y. M. C. A.'s, Y. W. C. A/s, 
and playground associations. In six cities, play and recreation 
were managed by industrial establishments; in two by cham- 
bers of commerce ; in two by private endowments ; in three by 
private individuals. (122: 493.) 

During 1916, 171 cities reporting to the Playground and 
Recreation Association of America, supported play and recrea- 
tion by municipal tax ; 94 by private funds ; and 95 by municipal 
and private funds. Twelve cities issued bonds for recreation 
purposes in 1916. (122: 494.) 

One hundred forty-two recreation buildings were reported 
from fifty-six cities. These buildings were erected for recrea- 
tion purposes. (122: 495.) Play and recreation centers in the 
cities reporting were open for the first time in forty-one cities 
during 1916, and sixty-seven were planning to put in recreation 
work in 1917. (122: 496-7.) 

One means of measuring public interest in a governmental 
affair is by the amount of money put into it. Though most 
recreational facilities of the cities are privately owned, there 
is a heavy governmental investment in them, and the cost 
of maintenance is large. However, an examination of the dis- 
tribution of the expenses of city government shows a small 
outlay for recreational purposes when compared with other 
expenses. 

In cities of the United States having a population of over 
30,000 each, the most important governmental expenses are 
distributed as follows: general government, 11.3 per cent; pro- 
tection of persons and property, 22 per cent; highways, 11.3 
per cent; education, including libraries, 31.4 per cent; con- 
servation of health, and sanitation, 10.1 per cent; charities, 
hospitals and correction, 6.8 per cent ; recreation, 3.7 per cent. 



./ 



36 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

(33: 212.) In cities of 500,000 and over, and in cities of 100,- 
000 to 300,000, 4 per cent of municipal expenses is for recrea- 
tion. The lowest, 2.6 per cent, is in cities of 50,000 to 100,000. 
(33:212.) 

The value of properties held for recreation in these 204 
cities of over 30,000 each, is $1,205,076,000. (33: 291.) The 
total expenses in these cities for recreation purposes in 1915, 
were $21,389,000. The recreation buildings in thirty-eight 
cities are valued at $4,094,000. (122: 496.) 

A recent bulletin by Arthur Williams, issued by the Play- 
ground and Recreation Association of America, summarizes 
the administrative tendency of recreation so well that parts 
of it are quoted here. Mr. Williams says: 

"The present tendency is to coordinate all the recreation 
activities of the city under one administrative body with legal 
standing in the community with adequate funds appropriated 
by the municipality. 

"There have been, however, slight differences of opinion as 
to what municipal department this work should be entrusted — 
the school boards, the park board, or a recreation commission. 

"The great majority of recreation workers today, however, 
feel that because of the varied kinds of activities which it is 
necessary for an effective administrative body to carry on it 
is advisable to have a separate body for this work in which 
can be coordinated all the playground and recreation work of 
the city, including the supervision of commercial amusements. 

"A special committee appointed by the Playground and 
Recreation Association of America to study the question of 
administration found that the cities having commissions were 
on a whole better satisfied with this form of administration 
than cities having other forms of control. Ten out of thirteen 
commission correspondents favored commission control. Seven 
out of thirteen park board writers favored commission con- 
trol in some form. 

"This committee reported, Tt is fair to conclude that in 
cities where the interest is greatest, the problems most varied 
and the movement furthest developed, the distinct tendency 
is toward the commission idea, — playground or recreation 
commissions composed of people having an appreciation of both 
the park and schools' ideals, but with a social insight that per- 
mits a deeper appreciation of the meaning of leisure from the 



MUNICIPAL RECOGNITION . 37 

standpoint of civic-righteousness and efficient citizenship 
and the physical and moral welfare of the race'." (119a.) 

There is a tendency toward the development of a munici- 
pal system of public play and recreation, that is somewhat 
comparable in organization and administration to the public 
school system. The development of this system is hindered 
especially by social conservatism, and by boards and depart- 
ments that have control of certain phases of recreation, also 
by commercial agencies, that in a large measure really con- 
trol recreational activities. 

Attempts to deal with play and recreation as parts of 
other institutions, have led to a multiplicity of means of man- 
agement, and to duplication of facilities. Financial investment 
means public recognition. Cities are spending more year after 
year for recreation. (33: 95.) As education, through much 
the same processes that recreation is now passing, has grown 
to be a definite public responsibility assumed by public author- 
ity — a separate institution — so does recreation seem to be 
slowly becoming a municipal responsibility in the large cities 
of the United States. 



CHAPTER V 

A Study of the Public Play and Recreation Facilities of 
Forty-Six Small Cities and Villages of Nebraska 

A. Introductory — Some Recent Investigations of Municipal 

Recreation 

Surveys and studies covering practically all phases of 
human activity have been made in great numbers in the last 
ten years — most of them in the last five years. Two recent 
definitions of social surveys by experts, one in the field of 
municipal administration, and the other in the field of social 
research, will be given here to indicate the present status of 
the survey movement. Dr. W. B. Munro says: "A social sur- 
vey is simply an elaborate inquiry into the conditions under 
which the people live, particularly in the crowded areas; it 
is a study of their earnings and expenditures, their places of 
work, their homes, their recreations, in fact all their economic 
and social relations." (72: 69.) "A social survey," writes Dr. 
Carol Aronovici, "may therefore be defined as a stock taking 
of social factors that determine the conditions of a given com- 
munity, whether that be a neighborhood, village, city, county, 
state or nation, with a view to providing adequate information 
necessary for the intelligent planning and carrying out of con- 
structive and far-reaching social reforms." (7:15.) 

An examination of social surveys shows that the second 
definition more nearly approaches the best present practice. 
However, many social surveys are merely social diagnoses. 
The following list of groups of social surveys provides a sort 
of measure of social unrest: city, rural, school, health, hous- 
ing, industrial, municipal administration, vice, delinquency and 
correction, poverty and charity, mental hygiene, church, vo- 
cational education, infant mortality, leisure time. (7 : 217-52 ; 
and 15.) This list is not complete, but it is sufficient to indi- 
cate the extent of the social survey movement. In 1916, more 
than two hundred social surveys had been made in the United 
States, and the results printed. (7:213.) 

Dr. Aronovici lists in his book, 'The Social Survey," 
twenty-four social organizations and foundations in the United 
States, which advise and assist in social survey work. He gives 



INTRODUCTORY— SMALL TOWN STUDY 39 

this as a partial list of such agencies. (7: 215-16.) It is 
worthy of notice in this connection that eighteen of these or- 
ganizations are located in New York City, three in Boston, 
two in Philadelphia, and one in Baltimore. 

Most of the recreation surveys have been made in large 
cities. School surveys have devoted considerable attention 
to recreation and play from the standpoint of the child. 

The study of small towns and villages here presented does 
not claim to be a leisure time survey of these communities. It 
is rather an attempt to do three things : 1. To inventory the 
public play and recreation facilities of these towns; 2. To de- 
termine to what extent they are utilized by the people; 
3. To evaluate the agencies that provide them, and to interpret 
the means of controlling them. This study will also help to 
bring out the fact that the metropolitan character of the urban- 
ization of rural regions and small towns has not been duly con- 
sidered in dealing with American social life. This is especially 
true with reference to metropolitan influence on forms of pub- 
lic play and recreation in small cities and villages. 

Before entering into the discussion of the main purpose 
of the study, it seems relevant to note a few typical cases of 
recent investigations, chiefly in small cities. 

Dr. W. B. Forbush in "The Coming Generation," published 
in 1912, describes the recreational facilities of thirty county 
seats in the Middle West. He spent a week in each of these 
cities, which ranged in population from 3,000 to 10,000. The 
towns were, he says, typically American, representing the 
average community life in the United States. 

Dr. Forbush considers these county capitals as places in 
which life is "dreary and colorless." For the sake of brevity 
his interesting descriptions are omitted and the recreational 
features of these towns, as he saw them, merely listed. The 
following condenses the chief points of his observations: 

1. Libraries. There is usually a Carnegie library, con- 
taining a well-chosen collection of books. The reading rooms 
used very little except by children. Generally some good pic- 
tures. 

2. Theatres. A number of picture shows exhibiting films 
"usually irreproachable in character," in a poor building "not 
suggestive of moral associations of the highest quality." 
During the winter season these are supplemented by traveling 



40 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

troupes that dispense melodrama and vaudeville at the "opera 
house." 

3. Chautauquas, fairs and lyceums. A chautauqua last- 
ing from one to three weeks, is supported by every fourth or 
fifth county seat. These are usually held in groves near the 
cities, where the people are instructed and entertained by the 
able talent of "these great outdoor universities." The county 
fairs in the late fall are "great reunion places forTrinsmen and 
neighbors. " The lyceums come in the winter bringing to the 
people the chautauqua minus the fellowship of outdoor life. 

4. Churches, lodges and clubs. Of the churches Dr. For- 
bush makes this statement, "It is a surprising thing to one 
who has visited the churches in these county seats, to find 
how generally institutional and social features are absent." 
He further states, that except for Sunday schools, with their 
occasional festivals, and a few other special occasions, the 
churches are closed all week, being open only for Sunday wor- 
ship and mid-week prayer meeting. The great annual affairs 
of these churches are the revivals, which are described as "oc- 
casions of religious turmoil" and community excitement. He 
laments the fact that the churches have entirely neglected their 
social duties and opportunities. He says, "The relation of 
such churches, for example, to the problem of amusement of 
young people is a dangerous and impossible one." 

Nearly all of the men in these county seats belong to one 
or more fraternal orders. The lodges, too, have failed in their 
social obligations to their communities, for most of them 
equip commodious rooms, and keep them closed except upon 
meeting nights. Dr. Forbush contrasts the passiveness of 
men's organizations with the social efficiency of the women's 
clubs. He says of these clubs, "They organize departments for 
definite social purposes, and they earnestly set themselves to 
studying and supplying the community's needs." (35 : 241-48.) 

On the whole, Dr. Forbush looks upon the recreational 
facilities of these towns as inefficient and inadequate. His con- 
clusions are probably authentic and just. His training and 
reputation would justify such an assumption. . 

During the last five years recreational surveys of cities 
have been made from several standpoints and for several 
purposes. It seems pertinent to call attention here to typi- 
cal surveys, and to the general recommendations based on the 
findings. 



INTRODUCTORY— SMALL TOWN STUDY 41 

In 1914, the Department of Surveys and Exhibits of the 
Russell Sage Foundation, in cooperation with the Springfield 
Survey Committee, conducted a general social survey of Spring- 
field, Illinois. This survey is published in nine sections. One 
section deals with recreation in Springfield. In discussing 
the "Basis of Public Concern in Recreation," the authors say: 
"The cities which up to now have gone farthest in municipal 
care for recreation have been mainly those in which the ex- 
cessive delinquency of children in certain well defined districts 
has called public attention to the external causes of viciousness. 
.... The movements for playgrounds thus originated became 
finally a movement for all sorts of recreation facilities under 
public auspices. But in Springfield the conditions that hamper 
play are not conspicuously present, and as a consequence, its 
public conscience has not been greatly burdened with recrea- 
tion matters. Nevertheless, in this city just as in other com- 
munities, whether or not they show the plague spots peculiar 
to bigness, there occurs each year an appalling wreckage of hu- 
man careers — appalling both because of its size and prevent- 
ability." (50:5.) 

The recommended recreation program for Springfield in- 
cludes a wider use of the school plants, and public parks ; and 
proper inspection and control of commercial recreation, under 
the coordinate control of the public school and park author- 
ities, and a city committee of recreation. (50: 97-103.) 
Springfield is a city of 52,000 people. 

"The Recreational Survey" of Madison, Wisconsin, a city 
of 26,000, was made in 1915, by a survey committee appointed 
by the Madison Board of Commerce. C. W. Hetherington was 
chairman of the committee. The purpose of this survey from 
the standpoint of the Board of Commerce is thus stated by 
its Board of Directors: "It is conceded by the modem city 
planners and community builders that the city of greatest 
material growth in the future will be that city which gets the 
largest number of people to acknowledge the superior quality 
of its human background. 

"Adequate play and recreation facilities have too im- 
portant a future economic value for a community to inventory 
the present worth of a study, such as this, from the stand- 
point of financial outlay alone. Then, too, a large proportion 
of crime and misery is found to have its inception in negative 
recreational facilities." (70 : Foreword.) 



42 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

This survey stresses the economic value of adequate play 
and recreation equipment, and recommends a permanent play 
and recreation committee, appointed by the Madison Board 
of Commerce, and cooperating with the city, park, school, 
church, and charity officials. This committee is to direct and 
coordinate with various recreation agencies of the city, and 
to prevent especially duplication of work and financial waste. 
(70: 2 and 102.) 

At the request of the Ipswich School Committee, H. R. 
Knight of the Russell Sage Foundation, made a recreation sur- 
vey of Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1914. This is published 
under the title of "Play and Recreation in a Town of 6>000." 
The director says of this survey: "Its purpose was to deter- 
mine what the schools might do to meet the recreation needs 
of the community, with special reference to the school children. 
As the investigation progressed the larger aspect of the prob- 
lem demanded attention owing to their inter-relation with most 
of the free time activities of the people." (65: 3.) 

This survey recommends that the recreation facilities of 
Ipswich be administered by the public school authorities co- 
operating with the Park and Playground Committees. This 
plan centralizes authority in a permanent body directly re- 
sponsible to the people. (65 : 66-71.) 

In Illinois, under the direction of R. E. Hieronymus, Com- 
munity Advisor of the University of Illinois, there is now be- 
ing conducted a state wide survey of the school and the com- 
munity. (52.) Two sets of detailed and searching question- 
naires are being used. 

One deals with the various activities "apart from the usual 
school work, carried on through the school system for the 
betterment of the community." These are considered under 
the following heads : Educational, Civic, Health, Social, Recre- 
ational, Religious, and Miscellaneous. These topics are in- 
tended to include all types of community service, apart from 
the regular school, rendered by the school to the community. 

The other questionnaire includes "the educational agencies 
independent of the public school, or connected indirectly with 
it." In great detail ten large pages call for community in- 
formation under ten topics: 1. Library; 2. Press; 3. Moving 
pictures and theatres; 4. Lectures, lyceums and chautauquas; 
5. Clubs; 6. Schools and classes not elsewhere included; 7. 



INTRODUCTORY— SMALL TOWN STUDY 43 

Health; 8. Recreation; 9. Religious; 10. Special "Days," oc- 
casions, etc. (52.) 

This Illinois survey is not alone municipal, and is not 
chiefly recreational. It covers all sorts of activities in all 
kinds of communities, in a very comprehensive manner. It 
is described here because it is a present example of survey 
effort, with the end in view of listing, evaluating, and co- 
ordinating community activities, and social resources. 

The observations of Dr. Forbush and the facts of the sur- 
veys just given, are noted here in order to call attention to the 
public interest in the problems of play and recreation, and to 
give some conception of the ways in which the smaller cities 
are trying to meet and solve these problems. At a conference 
on recreation in towns of less than ten thousand population, 
held during the last Recreation Congress at Grand Rapids, 
Michigan, this statement was made by a recreation leader, 
and was unchallenged, "Cities of less than 10,000 people 
show the greatest lack of interest in the play movement. There 
commercial recreation is the dominant factor." (2: 162.) In 
1910, there were only four cities in Nebraska having a pop- 
ulation of more than 10,000 each. 

B. State Regulations Relating to Recreation 

It is only within the last twenty years that recreation has 
been generally considered a matter of public concern. In 1894, 
there was but one state that had a definite recreation law. 
(47.) In 1907, five state laws were passed in the United States 
relating to recreation. In the seven years preceding, six state 
laws were enacted dealing with the subject. In 1911, twenty- 
seven important recreation laws were passed by the state leg- 
islatures. (2: 2-3.) The number has increased very rapidly 
since that time. Recent state laws on recreation in twenty- 
seven states, and the District of Columbia are given in the 
1915 edition of "Recreation Legislation" by Lee F. Hanmer 
and August H. Brunner. (48: 9-75.) 

City laws and ordinances are of course much more numer- 
ous than the state laws. Twenty pages of the pamphlet just 
mentioned are filled with typical city ordinances on recreation 
taken from the laws of the following sixteen cities: Boston 
and Brockton, Massachusetts ; Buffalo, New York ; Charleston, 
South Carolina ; Cleveland, Ohio ; Detroit, Michigan ; Hartford, 
Connecticut ; Holyoke, Massachusetts ; Los Angeles, California ; 
New Britain, Connecticut ; Newport, Rhode Island ; New York, 



44 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

New York; Oakland, California; Providence, Rhode Island; 
Syracuse, New York ; and Worchester, Massachusetts. In de- 
scribing these city ordinances the compilers say, "The number 
of city laws and ordinances on this subject is so great that we 
are including in this pamphlet only those that are typical and 
that illustrate the different methods used locally in dealing 
with public recreation." No ordinance in the list is over eight 
years old. Only three are over five years old. (48.) 

The older legislation, state and municipal, affecting recre- 
ation was chiefly to protect society from those whose recrea- 
tional practices were in some way objectionable to society. 

In Nebraska, as in the other states, positive legislation re- 
lating to recreation is a recent development. Most of the laws 
until in very recent years were attempts to prohibit, regulate 
or suppress, forms of recreation that were considered ob- 
jectionable and injurious to society in general, or to certain 
classes or age groups. Sanitation and public physical safety 
of recreation places have been given considerable attention 
in recent years. 

This negative legislation has, in Nebraska, dealt chiefly 
with cigarettes, saloons, billiard halls, bowling alleys, theatres, 
motion picture houses, and baseball. It is not necessary to 
go into the details regarding the numerous regulations and 
restraints placed upon many recreational agencies by these 
laws. In general, the laws are suppressive and destructive. 

Some positive and constructive recreational legislation has 
come from the last two legislatures. Two laws relating to the 
use and erection of public buildings for community purposes, 
may add much to the public recreation facilities of the cities 
of the state. The legislative act of 1915, gives boards of ed- 
ucation in cities and villages, and electors in rural school 
districts, the right to allow the people of the community to 
use public school buildings for neighborhood purposes. This 
law makes it legally possible for every school house in the 
state to become a community center. (105: 553-54.) 

The municipal auditorium law of 1917, gives to cities of 
the second class, the power "to accept by gift, to purchase, or 
to build" an auditorium, and "to maintain, manage, and operate 
the same for the benefit of the inhabitants of said cities." (79.) 
Bonds may be issued for the purpose of purchasing or erecting 
such a building. A one-mill tax may be levied to maintain it. 
The mayor and the council levy the tax, and determine how 



STATE REGULATION 45 

the building shall be managed. Important recreational agen- 
cies may by this law be placed under full control of the cities. 

Another step toward municipal provision for recreation, 
was made by the law of 1915, which is titled "An act to author- 
ize all incorporated villages, towns and cities to levy a tax of 
not more than one mill for music and amusement fund." (105 : 
488.) The levy for this fund is made by the city council or 
village board, and the management is placed with a committee 
on municipal amusements and entertainments. This commit- 
tee is selected from the council or board. (105 : 488.) Two bills 
were before the legislature of 1917 to permit the tax levy for 
the music and amusement fund to be increased to two mills. 
Neither bill passed. 

Another measure which became a law in 1915, provides 
for amusements in second class cities and villages, by giving 
the local authorities the power or right to levy a tax of not less 
than one mill, and not more than three mills annually for a 
park fund. This fund must be used for "amusements" and for 
developing and caring for parks. (105: 228-229.) 

While all this legislation is of a permissive character, it 
marks a distinct step in advance of the "power to restrain, 
prohibit and suppress" recreation legislation that preceded 
it. Mandatory laws will very likely in a few years follow the 
optional laws. Public assumption of activities that have pre- 
viously been left to non-governmental agencies are apt to fol- 
low this order. 

C. An Inventory of the Public Play and Recreation Facilities 
of the Forty-Six Cities and Villages 

In 1910, twenty and four-tenths per cent of the people of 
Nebraska lived in cities and villages of less than 2,500 popu- 
lation. (109: 4.) There were at that time seventy-seven 
cities and villages in the state having from 900 to 2,500 in- 
habitants each. This study has to do with forty-six of the 
cities and villages of this group; twenty-eight of these have 
a population of from 900 to 1,500 each. These are placed in 
Class I. Class II includes eighteen cities of 1,500 to 2,500 in- 
habitants each. These 46 towns are distributed over 36 of 
the 93 counties of the state. The Class I towns are scattered 
over 22 counties. The 18 towns of Class II are in 18 different 
counties. Cities of both classes are in four counties. 

In two of the 36 counties the number of inhabitants per 



46 



MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 



square mile, in 1910, was from 2 to 6; in 11 counties, from 6 to 
18 ; in 22 counties, from 18 to 45 ; and in one county from 45 to 
90. When the density of the population of the state is consid- 
ered, the distribution of the cities is found to be representa- 
tive. The greatest number of cities are in the southeast 
section of the state, where the population is from 18 to 45 
persons per square mile. The fewest cities are in the north- 
west, with from 2 to 6 inhabitants for each square mile. The 
central section, with a population of from 6 to 18 for each 
square mile, is represented by eleven towns. 

Below is given the list of counties in which the 46 towns 
are located. Unless a number follows the name of the county, 
there is but one town in each county in each class. 





Class I Towns 




Class II Towns 


1. 


Boone 


1. 


Boone 


2. 


Buffalo 


2. 


Burt 


3. 


Cass 


3. 


Butler 


4. 


Cheyenne 


4. 


Cuming 


5. 


Clay (3) 


5. 


Custer 


6. 


Cuming 


6. 


Dawson 


7. 


Dakota 


7. 


Fillmore 


8. 


Dawes (2) 


8. 


Johnson 


9. 


Fillmore 


9. 


Kearney 


10. 


Franklin 


10. 


Lancaster 


11. 


Furnas (2) 


11. 


Merrick 


12. 


Harlan 


12. 


Nuckolls 


13. 


Knox 


13. 


Pawnee 


14. 


Nemaha 


14. 


Saunders 


15. 


Nuckolls 


15. 


Scott's Bluff 


16. 


Pierce 


16. 


Seward 


17. 


Polk (2) 


17. 


Thayer 


18. 


Richardson 


18. 


Valley 


19. 


Saline 






20. 


Sarpy 






21. 


Sherman (2) 






22. 


Stanton 







Most of the data used in this study were obtained from 
the mayors of the forty-six towns and villages. Omitting 
Omaha and Lincoln there were, in 1910, one hundred places in 
Nebraska, each of which had a population of 900 or more. A 
questionnaire was sent to the mayors of each of these 100 



RECREATIONAL INVENTORY 47 

towns. Replies were received from fifty-three places. There 
were but seven returns from cities having a population of 
more than 2,500 each. These ranged from 2,600 to 10,000. 
The reports from these larger places were not so complete as 
those from the smaller towns. On account of the wide range 
of population, and the small number, and incompleteness of 
the replies, these seven cities are not included in the study. 

A critical examination of the questionnaire will make 
quite evident the reason for the small number, and the incom- 
pleteness of the replies from the larger places. 

Below are given the essential features of the question- 
naire. A brief letter explaining its purpose was sent with it 
to each mayor. The form used had spaces for answers and 
discussions following each question and item. The question- 
naire was sent out in February, 1917. 

The Questionnaire 
Means provided for Play, Recreation and Leisure: 
I. By the City of Paid for en- 
tirely or in part by city funds : 

1. Does the city own open land spaces that are used for 

play and recreation? How many? 

Area in acres? The approximate value 

of such land? How used? 

2. Do you have a City Hall? For what pur- 
poses is it used? 

3. What city building or buildings are used for recrea- 
tion purposes? 

For what recreation purposes?... 

4. Is there a gymnasium in any city building? (Not in- 
cluding school buildings) . 

5. Are summer concerts or other music provided by the 
city? 

6. Does the city provide supervised summer playgrounds 
for children? Open how many weeks? 

7. Any other places or means provided by the city? 

8. Does your city levy a tax for amusements or park 
fund? If so, how many mills? 

9. Is there a move on the part of the city or of the peo- 
ple to erect a community building? If so, 

who or what organization is back of the movement? 
For what purposes is the building to be used? 



48 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

What is the building to cost? 

Who is to pay for it? 

10. Is there any move on the part of the city to acquire 
by purchase or otherwise lands within or without the 

city for parks or other recreation purposes?.... 

If so, please describe the movement 

II. By Commercial Places, for profit : 

1. How many Billiard or Pool Halls? No. of 

tables? 

2. Bowling Halls? No. of alleys? 

3. Moving Picture Shows?. 4. Theatres or 

Opera Houses? , 5. Public Dance Halls? 

6. Saloons? 7. Baseball Parks 

or Athletic Fields? 8. Race Tracks? 

9. What other means or places? 

Please indicate by number which of above Commer- 
cial places are regulated by city ordinances. Num- 
bers 

III. By the Public Schools : 

1. Are school buildings used for other purposes than for 
regular school work? 

2. Are evening or night schools provided? 

If so, for whom? : 

How many weeks each year? 

3. Are school buildings used for social or recreation pur- 
poses? 

In what ways ? 

4. Is there a gymnasium in a school building? 

5. Does the School Board provide for summer schools? 
For summer playgrounds? 

6. What other means? 

IV. By the Churches. Unusual uses of buildings : 

1. How many church buildings and buildings used for 
church services in your city? 

2. How many of these have reading rooms? 

Recreation or game rooms? 

3. What other means of providing for play and recrea- 
tion? 

V. By other Organizations or Groups of People: 

1. Do you have a Commercial Club? Does the 

Club have recreation or game rooms? 



RECREATIONAL INVENTORY 49 

How used? 

2. Is there a Lecture or Entertainment Course in your 

city ? How 

managed? 

3. Is there a Chautauqua each year? How 

managed? 

4. Did your city have a Street Fair or Carnival last sum- 
mer or fall? 

5. What other means? 

Are the public play and recreation facilities of your 

city satisfactory? If not, what changes or 

improvements would you suggest? Please answer on 
the back of this sheet ; also use the back of this sheet 
for explanations, or additional information. 

The mayors of the larger cities would not be apt to have 
in mind the intimate detailed knowledge of their cities, neces- 
sary to fill out the questionnaire. To secure the information 
from other sources would have taken time and been trouble- 
some, so it was not done. On the other hand, the mayor of the 
small place would in most cases know his city well enough to 
answer the questions easily and quickly. The fact that these 
mayors had held office almost one year, at least, when the 
questionnaire was filled out, adds materially to the accuracy 
and completeness of the returns. 

The mayor of a small town in his official capacity, or as 
an observing citizen, would very likely know the recreational 
conditions of his community, and would take note of social 
welfare or other unusual community movements. He would 
not be liable to allow his enthusiasm for a particular social 
reform, or a special activity of the town, to color his opinion. 
Persons active in social or religious work in a narrow field 
are usually too near the problem to see it in its real relations. 
Taking into account all the factors in the case, it is probable 
that no person in a small community knows better the entire 
social situation, or would report it more fairly than the mayor. 

The returns from the mayors were checked and supple- 
mented from various sources. Many facts were taken from 
the "Nebraska State Gazetteer and Business Directory for 
1917." (77.) 

Public play and recreation activities may be grouped in 
various ways. The following grouping will be used: 



50 



MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 



1. Governmental agencies. These include all play and 
recreational facilities provided by the city or board of edu- 
cation. 

2. Commercial agencies. Here are included all agencies 
whose chief aim is selling recreation. Examples are motion 
picture houses, billiard rooms and dance halls. 

3. Incidental agencies. These are commercial agencies 
whose chief aim is selling something else, but which incident- 
ally provide means for positive or negative recreation. Sa- 
loons, barber shops, drug stores and livery stables belong to 
this group. 

4. Religious, philanthropic and social agencies. This 
group includes churches, Y. M. C. A.'s, chautauquas, etc. 

5. Unorganized agencies. Here are placed all agencies 
and facilities not covered by the other groups. Vacant lots 
and buildings, lumber sheds, alleys, etc., are included. This 
group is an important one in many small towns. No attempt 
is made in this study to deal with it. 

The above grouping of public play and recreational agen- 
cies is an adaptation of the classifications used by the Madi- 
son Recreational Survey, and the Survey Committee on Rec- 
reation, of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, New 
York City, 1917. (70 and 82.) 

The governmental agencies that contribute to the play 
and recreational life of the community will be considered first. 
These are listed in Table I. 

TABLE I 

Governmental Agencies of Play and Recreation 









In Class I Towns 


In Class II Towns 1 


?otal 




Facilities 


No, 


Description 


No. 


Description 




1. 


Parks 


15 


Area, 5 to 23 A. 


8 


Area, 5 to 14 A. 


33 


2. 


Music 


16 




11 


By Citizens, 3 


27 


3. 


Libraries 


19 


Not public, 4 


13 


Not public, 1 


32 


4. 


City Halls 


14 


Other than office 
use, 12 


13 


Other than office 
use, 12 


27 


5. 


School Bldgs. 


35 


Recreation use, 11 
Gymnasiums, 18 


35 


Recreation use, 9 
Gymnasiums, 13 


70 
20 
31 


6. 


Amusement 














or Park Tax 


13 




12 




25 



There are public parks in fifteen cities of Class I, and in 



RECREATIONAL INVENTORY 5i 

eight of Class II. They range in area from two to twenty- 
three acres. (Crawford has a park of 134 acres, leased per- 
petually from the United States Government.) These parks 
are used for all sorts of outdoor sports, concerts, picnics, and 
chautauquas. Only four towns report special park equipment. 
One city (Broken Bow) floods its park in winter for skating. 

Summer concerts or other music is provided by sixteen 
cities of Class I, and eleven of Class II. Three cities support 
concerts by private contributions. Twenty-five of the forty- 
six cities levy a special amusement or park tax. 

There are public libraries in nineteen cities of Class I, 
and thirteen of Class II. Of these thirty-two libraries, nine 
were built during 1915-16; eight of these are Carnegie libra- 
ries. Four cities of Class I, and one of Class II, have libraries 
that are not supported by public taxation. These are main- 
tained by women's clubs or other associations. 

Fourteen Class I cities, and thirteen Class II, have city 
halls. Twelve in each class are used for other purposes than 
city offices. These uses are chiefly as headquarters for fire- 
men, and rooms for band practice, and public meetings. 

There are thirty-five school buildings in each class of 
cities. There are eighteen gymnasiums in Class I, and thir- 
teen in Class II. Twenty-five high schools of these towns 
took part in the 1917 state basket ball tourney, and twenty- 
three are members of the Nebraska High School Debating 
League. Four cities report summer supervision of school 
playgrounds; one a summer school. Four have evening 
schools. "Are school buildings used for social or recreation 
purposes?" was answered in the affirmative by eleven cities 
of Class I and nine of Class II. The purposes usually given 
were basket ball, entertainments, social gatherings, class 
parties and plays, concerts and lectures. One city, in appar- 
ent despair, reported, " is 50 years behind the 

times in the subjects you mention." 

The commercial agencies considered are listed in Table 
II, in the order of the frequency of their occurrence. 



52 



MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 









TABLE II 








Commercial Agencies of Play and Recreation 








In Class I Towns 


In Class II Towns Total 




Facilities 


No. 


Description 


No. 


Description 


1. 


Moving 












Pictures 


28 


No. of houses, 30 


17 


No. of houses, 25 45 


2. 


Opera Houses 


24 




16 


40 


3. 


Billiard Halls 


22 


42 halls, 220'tables 


12 


33 halls, 163 tables 34 


4. 


Baseball 












Parks 


19 


23 parks 


12 


14 parks 31 


5. 


Dance Halls 


14 


18 halls 


9 


16 halls 31 


6. 


Race Tracks 


10 




9 


19 


7. 


Bowling 


12 




8 


10 halls 20 


8. 


Street Fairs 


10 




8 


18 



One city in Class II has no moving picture show. This 
city is built around a church college, and is really a suburb 
of the state capital. Two in each class have no "opera houses." 
Billiards is evidently the most popular indoor game, and base- 
ball the most popular outdoor game. Public dance halls are 
found in just half of the towns. The nineteen county fair 
cities account for the nineteen race tracks. Bowling is found 
in but twenty places. Street fairs or carnivals are reported 
from eighteen towns. One city has a skating rink. 

Before taking up the incidental agencies, it may be well 
to restate the meaning of the term. These agencies are com- 
mercial. Their chief aim is selling something besides recrea- 
tion, but incidentally they provide recreation, much of which 
may be of a questionable character. Persons not intimately 
acquainted with life in small towns, may not see the signifi- 
cance of some of the items of this list. These agencies are 
grouped in Table III. 

TABLE III 
Incidental Agencies of Play and Recreation 

Column 1 shows the number of towns in each class that 
have the agencies listed ; column 2 gives the total number of 
each agency in each class. Column 3 is the total of columns 
1 and 1 ; column 4 is the total of columns 2 and 2. 





Agencies 


1 


2 


1 


2 


3 


4 


1. 


Saloons 


9 


32 


2 


10 


11 


42 


2. 


Drug Stores 


28 


57 


18 


52 


46 


109 


3. 


Restaurants 


27 


52 


17 


47 


44 


99 


4. 


Barber Shops 


28 


72 


18 


57 


46 


129 



RECREATIONAL INVENTORY 53 



5. 


Livery Stables 


26 


42 


18 


30 


44 


72 


6. 


Garages 


25 


50 


17 


47 


42 


97 


7. 


Commercial Clubs 


19 


19 


15 


15 


34 


34 


8. 


County Fairs 


9 


9 


10 


10 


19 


19 


9. 


Newspapers 


28 


43 


18 


41 


46 


84 



The state prohibition law has become effective since these 
data were collected, so saloons may be counted out. However, 
it is worth noting that only eleven of the forty-six towns had 
saloons. Drug stores and restaurants are about equal in num- 
ber, 109 and 99. They are in many cases also ice cream and 
soda parlors, and cigar and candy stores. Class I cities have 
72 barber shops; Class II, 57. The 46 towns have 72 liv- 
ery stables, 97 garages and auto liveries. 

Only eight of the commercial clubs were reported as hav- 
ing special recreation facilities. Nine cities of Class I, and 
three of Class II have no commercial clubs. County fairs are 
held annually at nineteen of the twenty-five county seats. 
They usually last four days. 

Newspapers are listed in this group. There are forty- 
three local papers published in Class I towns and forty-one in 
Class II. The recreational features of newspapers have de- 
veloped greatly in the last few years. Sensational news, 
sports, funny columns, cartoons, and so-called funny pages 
provide real recreation for many readers. The patent side 
of local papers usually abounds with these attractions. The 
influence of newspapers and magazines not published locally 
is undoubtedly much greater than that of the local press. In 
many respects this influence is not good, and may become 
anti-social or even criminal. (31: 92-93.) 

The list of religious, philanthropic, and social agencies 
given in Table IV is not by any means complete. 

TABLE IV 
Religious, Philanthropic and Social Agencies of Play 

and Recreation 







Class I 


Towns 


Class II Towns 


Total 




Agencies 




No. 


No 




1. 


Churches 


28- 


-133 


bldga. 


18—132 bldgs. 


46 


2. 


Chautauquas 


26 






17 


43 


3. 


Lecture Courses 


22 






17 


39 


4. 


Boy Scouts 


4 






8 


12 


5. 


Y. M. C. A.'s 









2 


2 


6. 


Y. W. C. A.'s 
















54 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

Of the 265 church buildings in the forty-six towns, only 
thirteen reading rooms are reported from seven places, and 
fifteen recreation or game rooms from ten places. One church 
gymnasium and one church tennis court are reported. Three 
churches report special social uses. There are two Y. M. C. A. 
buildings in Class II cities. There are only thirteen such build- 
ings in the state. The total membership of the thirteen asso- 
ciations is a little less than 8,000. One-half of this member- 
ship is in Omaha and Lincoln. There are no Y. W. C. A. build- 
ings in these towns. There are but two such buildings in the 
state — one at Omaha, and one at Lincoln. There are three 
town and county Y. W. C. A/s in the state. These own no 
buildings. The Y. W. C. A. membership outside of the county 
associations is about 3,500. 

Chautauquas are supported by forty-three towns, and lec- 
ture courses by thirty-nine. These are managed by various 
organizations such as commercial clubs, public schools, li- 
braries, and committees of citizens. Twelve towns have Boy 
Scout Troops. There are 120 such troops in the state. Each 
troop numbers about twenty boys. There are 85 groups of 
Camp Fire Girls in the state. A list by towns is not available. 

In Table V is listed the public recreation facilities of the 
typical town of each Class. Means or activities are counted 
as typical, if they appear in half or more than half of the forty- 
six places. 

TABLE V 

Kecreational Facilities of the Typical Town of Each Class 

Class I Class II 

No. No. 

1 1 

1 1 

1 1 

1 1 

1 2 



1 2 

2 3 
1 1 
1 1 







Agencies 


I. 


Governmental 




1. 


Park 




2. 


Municipal Music 




3. 


Library 




4. 


City Hall 




5. 


School Building 


II. 


Commercial 




1. 


Moving Picture Show 




2. 


Billiard Hall 




3. 


Opera House 




5. 


Baseball Park 


III. 


Incidental 




1. 


Druf Store 



RECREATIONAL INVENTORY 55 

2. Barber Shop 2 3 

3. Livery Stable 1 2 

4. Garage 2 3 

5. Restaurant 2 3 

6. Commercial Club 1 1 

7. County Fair (If county seat) 1 1 

IV. Religious, Philanthropic, and Social 

1. Church 5 7 

2. Chautauqua 1 1 

3. Lecture Course 1 1 

In the typical town, government provides a five or ten acre 
park with very little equipment, open air concerts during the 
summer season and a library containing from 1,500 to 2,000 
volumes. The city hall is used occasionally for recreation and 
social purposes. The public school gymnasium is used for 
basket ball games. Other occasional uses of school buildings 
are, class functions, school plays, concerts, lectures and musical 
festivals. 

The commercial agencies are, in part at least, subject 
to the control of state laws and local ordinances. One or 
two moving picture shows, and two or three billiard halls are 
constant in all seasons. The dance hall is not so firmly es- 
tablished. Baseball seems to be commercialized. 

No other recreational agencies are open so many hours 
in the day, and so many days in the week as 1, 3, 4 and 5 of the 
incidental agencies. (See Table V.) 

Small towns are evidently over-churched, when the uses 
made of the buildings are considered. The typical Class I town 
has five churches; the Class II town has seven. A Chautau- 
qua and a lecture course are found in the typical town of each 
class. 

Community buildings are reported from three cities. 
Steps for the erection of community buildings are reported 
from eight Class I cities, and six Class II cities. The city gov- 
ernment is in some way back of these movements in nine 
places, women's clubs in two, a public service club in one, pri- 
vate support in one, and the citizens in one. 

The question, "Are the public play and recreation facilities 
of your city satisfactory ?" was answered, "Yes" by nine cities, 
eight of Class I, and one of Class II ; and "No" by twenty-one, 
twelve Class I, and nine Class II cities. Eight cities of each 
Class did not answer. One c'ty reported, "More than satis- 



56 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

factory; too much recreation." Fifteen mayors discussed 
changes and improvements in the management of public play 
and recreation. Their attitude toward the recreation problem 
is best shown by quoting their statements. These are given 
below. 

1. "We should have a city park and play and recreation 
ground for children. We should have a down town public 
reading room, with bowling alleys, and billiard tables and pool 
tables, properly looked after for the men, and public places 
should be abolished." 

2. "We want a public park for recreation purposes." 

3. "There should be public playgrounds, baseball for the 
little boys. Band concerts, etc." 

4. "I would suggest an athletic park and public playground 
for one thing, and a building of some kind that could be used 
for public gatherings and recreation during the winter months. 
Our city is sorely in need of a public park and playground as 
there is no place for the children to find amusement." 

5. "In my opinion we need some form of amusement for 
our children, especially during summer months. We also need 
some form of amusement for our young men and women." 

6. "Our town is not as progressive as other towns. It 
seems like our business men are all for themselves and for 
the dollars." 

7. "We hear a great deal of the 'conservation' of our re- 
sources. We should conserve our greatest resources, our chil- 
dren, upon whose character the nation depends. Every com- 
munity should have a well organized community building." 

8. "I feel that the city should purchase a few acres of 
ground adjoining the corporation, where fields should be pre- 
pared for outdoor exercises for the children during the sum- 
mer months. Swimming pools should be established." 

9. "We go to church and picture shows and quit at that." 

10. "There is a sentiment growing favoring the establish- 
ment of public playgrounds, and gymnasium which the Com- 
mercial Club and School Board will no doubt endorse." 

11. "I do not thing it is isufficient as the children are not 
properly cared for in the way of amusement." 

12. From a State Normal School town : "The advantages 
of the Normal are open to the citizens of the town, so that we 
do not feel this problem as some places do. The Normal School 
Athletic Field and Model School Playgrounds are at all times 



RECREATIONAL INVENTORY 57 

open, as well as the gymnasium, library, etc. Numerous 
musical entertainments, literary societies, etc. meet these 
needs of our people." 

13. From a town of 2,300 in the west-central part of the 
state: "Amusements are for children more than adults. The 
man or woman who can't amuse himself had as well die and 
be done with it, but with the kids it is different. They should 
have good, wholesome, strenuous amusement handed to them 
where it would be supervised and looked after by some one 
authorized so to do. From November to about this date 
(March 12) I have provided them with a skating pond at public 
expense and have policed and supervised it in the interest of 
the children. 

" I permit the children to use the streets and side-walks 
for all kinds of games, telling them to keep off the congested 
streets. They have never violated my instructions nor con- 
fidence. Roller skates are used to quite an extent on the side- 
walks Baseball is played on the streets and on 

vacant lots The schools maintain quite a library, and 

we have a Carnegie library also. Both are well patronized. 
A lyceum course undertaken by the high school during the 

past year was a loss The public Service Club has a 

contract for the Chautauqua for the coming year. We buy 
the program outright and give away tickets to all who can- 
not afford to buy them. We have a membership of 75, and 
are growing. We maintain a thorough reading course — mag- 
azines — periodicals — papers — dailies of all kinds. We have 
in our building two bowling alleys, four billiard and pool tables, 

piano, victrola, stage, card tables Wives and children 

of members are welcome at any time, day or night. Strangers 

are given the privilege of the club The club room 

is modern in every respect. 

"Picture shows are well attended I never saw a 

picture show that did not have a suggestion of evil 

in it. As they are run now they are breeders of vice 

They are the next thing that must be regulated or put out of 
business in the state. 

"What every town, every community in fact, needs, is a 

recreation park of ten acres or more The question 

here always arises as to how to pay for it. We do it only by 
private subscription." 

14. From a western town of 1,200 : "There are in every 



58 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

community people, who, having no children, or sense of com- 
munity interest and spirit, 'concentrated in self* are opposed 
to every movement in the general public interest that would re- 
sult in an increase of taxation. Their conception of govern- 
mental efficiency, apparently, being based on the minimum of 
taxation. Therefore, in order to provide for community build- 
ings, public playgrounds, publicly supported musical concerts, 
parks, good roads, and the conveniences and wholesome recre- 
ation and amusement which make community life better .... 
the voting of bonds within reasonable restrictions, must be 
expressly provided for by the legislature, and all unnecessary 
restraints removed." 

15. A city of 1,600 in the southeast part of the state: 
"We had some ladies here last summer who thought we ought 
to have a teacher to teach the children how to play. I offered 
to hire one, if they could find a business man who was making 
a success and supporting his family that had hired a teacher 
to teach him to play when he was young. We talked about 
the high cost of living. We need more people to produce than 
we do to play. I think more of one man who causes one hill 
of potatoes or one onion to grow than I do of all the play busi- 
ness that you can put up." 

These replies show a keen appreciation of the recreation 
problem, and a recognition of public responsibility for its so- 
lution. In but three of the replies (10, 11 and 15) are play 
and recreation clearly looked upon as children's activities only. 
The others recognize recreation as a community problem. In 
only one case (15) is the lack of sympathy, and the entire mis- 
conception of public needs clearly shown. The bearing of these 
replies upon the entire study will be brought out in division E 
of this chapter. 

This inventory discloses the fact that the public recrea- 
tion facilities of the Class I and Class II cities are almost 
identical. The only important difference is in the number of 
recreation places provided. Only three Class I cities, and one 
Class II city reported other means of play and recreation pro- 
vided by the city than those indicated in the questionnaire. 
Four Class I, and three Class II cities reported other commer- 
cial means besides those listed. One Class I, and two Class II 
cities mentioned school activities not suggested ; and two cities 
in each class reported unusual uses of church buildings not 
listed. 



RECREATIONAL INVENTORY 59 

Though this inventory is not complete, it includes all the 
important public facilities for play and recreation in these 
villages and cities. The uniformity of these provisions is ap- 
parent, and their similarity to facilities for the same purposes 
in larger cities, is evident. 

D. The Utilization and Inadequacy of Public Play and 
Recitation Facilities in the Cities and Villages 

No direct attempt has been made through the question- 
naire to find out how often, and to what extent the play and 
recreation facilities are used in the forty-six towns studied. 
However, it is not so difficult to determine this from other 
sources. The writer's seventeen years' experience as principal 
and superintendent of public schools in five villages and cities 
of the west, central, east, northeast and southeast parts of 
Nebraska, has given him first hand knowledge of typical towns 
of the groups under consideration. This experience has not 
been confined to the social contacts necessarily incident to the 
management of village and city schools. During the last eight 
years, especially, definite practical attempts were made through 
the schools, and other social betterment forces, to understand, 
and to help to improve play and recreation facilities. This 
statement of personal experiences and interest is offered 
here to aid the reader in measuring the worth of the interpre- 
tations of the data under consideration, and also to establish 
the right of the writer to introduce facts gained through 
these experiences. 

The public school of the governmental agencies, perhaps 
the most important and the most far-reaching in its influence, 
is a seasonal institution. It is usually closed three months in 
the year. During these three months no use is made of the 
school buildings. Only four towns report summer supervision 
of playgrounds, and the same number have summer and even- 
ing schools. It is common practice to dismantle school play- 
grounds during the vacation season and to store the apparatus 
in the school buildings. Systematic supervision of playgrounds 
is not usually provided even during the school days of the 
school year. 

The desire to win in school athletic contests has resulted 
in making school gymnasiums and athletic fields largely train- 
ing places for school teams. Evidence of this is shown by the 



60 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

fact that 120 high schools of Nebraska sent 1,007 boys to the 
Seventh Annual Basketball Tourney, at Lincoln in March, 1917. 
This tourney was held under the auspices of the University 
of Nebraska. Twenty-five of the forty-six towns considered 
in this study sent teams to this tourney. (103.) Much of the 
athletic energy of these small high schools is spent in training 
teams for this annual event. This training is obtained in part 
through games with neighboring school teams. Public use of 
the gymnasium is confined largely to these contests, which are 
held usually two or three times a month during the late fall 
and winter season. Thirty-one towns have gymnasiums. 
Twelve mention basket ball first in giving social and recrea- 
tional uses of school buildings. In answer to the question, 
"Are school buildings used for other purposes than regular 
school work?" seventeen replied, "Yes"; twenty-five, "No" ; 
four did not answer. Although legally permissible, there is 
not by any means complete utilization of school houses as 
community centers or for public recreation purposes. 

The public libraries of these towns are usually open on 
afternoons and evenings during the entire year. The num- 
ber of patrons indicates the use made of the reading mat- 
ter. The first ten Class I towns selected from the alpha- 
betical list, have an average of 648 patrons; three having 
less than 500; four from 500 to 800; and three from 800 to 
1,100. (80: 18-20.) Ten Class II cities selected in the same 
manner have an average of 898 patrons. Nine representative 
libraries of Class I cities, have an average annual circulation 
of 4,800 volumes ; ten, of Class II, 10,000 volumes. (80 : 18-20.) 
When these facts are considered in connection with the state- 
ment of a competent investigator that 74 per cent of the library 
books drawn by young people, and 70 per cent of those drawn 
by adults, are novels, the recreational influence of the public 
library is apparent. (23:108.) 

In addition to the regular uses of the library buildings, 
some communities have equipped basement rooms, and set 
them apart for the use of various local clubs, thus making the 
library building, in a sense at least, a community center. A 
children's reading room, a children's story hour, and a collection 
of pictures for children and adults are common in these li- 
braries. 

The music provided by the towns is in most cases band 
music. It is given generally by a local band as an open air con- 



USE OF RECREATIONAL FACILITIES 61 

cert, one evening each week, or every other week, in the public 
park or at some central point. These concerts are given only 
during the summer and fall. Being informal outdoor affairs, 
they really become neighborhood centers, places where neigh- 
bors and friends gather in groups to enjoy music and to visit. 
Incidentally, they attract people to the busines center of the 
town, and add to the evening sales of the stores. 

From the data at hand, and from direct observation, it 
seems safe to assert that the city halls are not used for many 
recreation purposes. Quarters for volunteer firemen are fre- 
quently provided. These in some instances are well-equipped 
game rooms and dance halls. A room for band practice is also 
a common provision. 

Commercial agencies exist for gain, so they are open to the 
public whenever state laws and city ordinances permit, or as 
much as the patronage will justify financially. Motion picture 
shows in these towns are open afternoons and evenings or 
evenings only. Few of the towns of Nebraska permit picture 
shows to open on Sundays. In 1913, only seven out of 57 towns 
of the state allowed these shows to open on Sundays. (37: 136.) 

The typical Nebraska town of Class I has two billiard halls, 
each containing five tables; the Class II town has three halls 
of eleven tables each. These halls provide in most of the towns 
the only public indoor game privileges. The popularity of the 
game is shown by the fact that twenty-two Class I towns have 
42 billiard halls. Eleven out of twelve Class II towns reported 
the number of billiard tables. These reported 163 tables. There 
are 33 halls in the twelve Class II towns. In the thirty-three 
towns of both Classes reporting there are 383 billiard tables, 
or an average of more than twelve to each town. These facts 
prove the demand for, and the popularity of this game. The 
game is not in good repute. It is generally under the ban of 
the church. It is subject to stringent state and local regula- 
tions. However, it is a game that appeals in a peculiar way 
to young men ; also the halls provide in all seasons a convenient, 
interesting and comfortable loafing place for men of all classes. 

The coming of the motion picture show has made a cheap 
means of amusement easily accessible to all. Every town ex- 
cept one, a suburb of Lincoln, has at least one motion picture 
show. The growth of the motion picture shows has resulted 
in a decrease in the number of traveling shows, and so in less 
frequent use of the "opera houses." Forty of the forty-six 



62 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

towns still have opera houses. In some cases they are used 
also for public dance halls. 

Baseball ranks first among the out-door sports of these 
towns. There are thirty-one baseball parks in the forty-six 
towns. This, of course, is a seasonal game. The other com- 
mercial agencies are seasonal or transitory. The carnival or 
street fair is a transient, commercial agent that seems to be 
passing away. 

Many of the incidental agencies are unique in the con- 
stancy of their influence. No other agencies of public play and 
recreation are so continually available for all, as are most of 
these. Necessity, custom and legal provisions permit drug 
stores, restaurants, livery stables and garages to keep open 
for business day and night throughout the year. No legal re- 
strictions are placed upon attendance at these places. They 
are open practically all of the time, to all who wish to take 
advantage of the indirect recreation provided. The paucity 
of proper recreational facilities for the young especially, in 
small towns forces them to seek the indirect means offered by 
the incidental agencies. 

Of the thirty-four commercial clubs of the forty-six towns 
only eight are mentioned as providing continuous means of 
recreation. Occasional social functions are held by these clubs 
in many of the towns. The membership of the clubs is made 
up in most cases of business men only. Their recreational 
influence is wielded chiefly through their prestige in city gov- 
ernment in securing and financing public entertainments that 
primarily bring trade to town. The reported recreational 
uses of the club rooms are cards, billiards and other indoor 
games. 

Not all the places and means included in the incidental 
group are listed in Table III. To those given in the table may 
be added the following, which are common to all the towns, 
either as separate establishments, or as departments of other 
businesses — candy shops, tobacco shops, news stands, ice cream 
and soda parlors, and railroad depots. Any one who knows 
intimately the ins and outs of life in small towns, cannot fail 
to realize the importance of many of these incidental agencies. 
They provide convenient and much used meeting places for 
young people, and since there is no equipment for active recre- 
ation, and no direct supervision of conduct, there is often a 
tendency towards dissipation rather than recreation. The fact 



USE OF RECREATIONAL FACILITIES i . 63 

that all the important incidental agencies offer only indoor 
attractions, adds to the possible banef ulness of their influences. 
In studying Table V one is impressed with the fact that the 
incidental agencies provide more places for recreation than 
any of the other agencies. The lead m numbers and in avail- 
ability help to make these agencies an important, but in a large 
measure an undetermined, and an unrecognized factor in public 
recreation. 

In one sense the religious, philanthropic and social agencies 
are incidental. These agencies do not exist for the purpose of 
providing play and recreation. Their chief purposes are in- 
dicated by their names. Experience has proved that in some 
cases the ends for which they exist can best be attained by pro- 
viding some means of play and recreation as an incentive to 
those who are to be the recipients of the higher values. 

Perhaps, no institution has been so slow to recognize this 
ancillary use of play and recreation, and, in fact, of all forms 
of social service, as the church. "The church must recognize 
that social conditions affect the spiritual side of life, and that 
spiritual conditions affect the social side of life." (16: 5.) 
"When the church actually labors at the tasks of evangelism 
and social service, they are found to be inter-dependent. So- 
cial service is found to have definite evangelistic values, and 
evangelism to have genuine social values." (117: 2.) 

The data with reference to unusual uses of church build- 
ings point to the failure of the churches in these communities 
to realize the truth of the above statements. There are 133 
churches in the 28 Class II towns, or an average of five for 
each town. That means in general one church building for 
each 300 persons. The proportion is almost the same for the 
18 Class II cities, which have 132 churches, or seven for each 
city. With the exception of the home, no other institution 
of civilization in these cities owns so many buildings as the 
church. 

The reported unusual uses of these 265 churches are as 
follows: Seven cities have thirteen churches with reading 
rooms; ten have fifteen churches maintaining recreation or 
game rooms ; one church gymnasium is reported ; and in three 
cases special mention is made of social uses. 

Of course, one must not fail to take account of the fact 
that many of the ordinary uses of churches are at least in 
part recreational. Religion at its best is a mode of relaxation. 



64 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

Its highest exercise decreases stress and tension, and tends 
to shift responsibility to a higher power, so, is in a true sense 
recreational. (86: 85.) The informal social features of regular 
church services in small cities add to their recreational value. 
The formalism and stiffness commonly characterstic of church 
exercises in large cities are not prevalent. The people meet 
as neighbors and friends. 

Sunday preaching is but a small part of the activities that 
are common to practically all church organizations. The Sun- 
day school with its occasional special programs, the young 
people's meetings, the class organizations, the various church 
socials, choir practices and the casual entertainment, include 
most of the extra activities of the average church. 

Attendants at regular church services in small towns, 
and also in large cities for that matter, are accustomed to hear 
the ministers recount each Sunday the numerous religious, 
semi-religious, educational, social and recreational functions 
and activities of their congregations and the community for 
the current week. These various affairs are not all held in the 
church buildings. The church buildings are not at all con- 
sidered social or recreation centers for the congregations. 
Some pastors and church officials regard many of these activ- 
ities as dangerous, and will not allow them to be held in the 
church buildings. 

A church in small towns is so rarely used avowedly for 
recreational purposes that it would undoubtedly attract atten- 
tion. The mayors report but six per cent of the total number 
of churches so used. A small gymnasium, little used, is listed 
as a part of the equipment of one church. The other direct 
provisions for recreation are recreation or game rooms. With 
only six church buildings in a hundred utilized directly for 
play and recreation purposes, it seems evident that the Chris- 
tian people of these small cities do not recognize the importance 
of the relation of play and leisure to religious life. 

While there is a church building in these towns for every 
300 persons, it does not at all follow that the recreational facil- 
ities offered by the churches are available and utilized by all 
of the people. In the United States as a whole about one-third 
of the population is affiliated with some church. (121 : 598-599.) 
Statistics show that, in 1906, there were 346,000 church mem- 
bers in Nebraska. (25 : 226.) This was very nearly one-third 
of the population at that time. 



USE OF RECREATIONAL FACILITIES 65 

The multiplicity of denominations, and denominational 
strife and jealousy which are common especially in small cities 
tend to alienate people from church attendance. A town of 
1,500 people cannot support five pastors of wide training, and 
insight into present social conditions and social needs. This 
is another factor that militates against church attendance and 
affiliation, and prevents the church from rendering the service 
to the community that it would render under more efficient 
leadership. Not all of the pastors of these small churches lack 
training and social vision, but as a rule the small congrega- 
tions are unable to provide an income sufficient to attract well 
trained men, and even if they are secured, they are usually 
handicapped by inadequate equipment and conservative church 
officials. In 1906, the average salary of ministers in the United 
States was $663 a year. The average annual salary of min- 
isters outside of the principal cities (cities of less than 25,000) 
was $573. (25: 94-95.) 

It seems that little can be expected from the churches in 
these cities in the way of providing recreation, as long as de- 
nominational lines are drawn as closely as they are now. Too 
much of the energy of the small church is expended in keeping 
up traditional religious activities — in keeping itself alive — to 
permit the introduction of many socializing influences, or to 
affiliate with other social service groups in providing for the 
care of community leisure in other buildings. A case to the 
point, the facts of which came from the principal of the 
public schools of a Nebraska town of about 1,000 people, illus- 
trates this conservatism of the church with reference to recre- 
ation. In this town a community club had rallied the people to 
the support of a tangible proposition for securing a community 
building. Provisions for the necessary funds had been worked 
out. The movement had reached the stage where definite plans 
for the erection of the building, and necessarily the uses to be 
made of it, were discussed. At this point a large number of 
the citizens wanted the building planned for billiards. The 
conservative church men objected. The discussions then ran 
into other uses of the building. Dancing and card playing were 
proposed and advocated by some. Church men straightway 
withdrew their support from the entire proposition. The com- 
munity divided, and the community building movement im- 
mediately collapsed. This town had two commercial billiard 



66 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

halls and a dance hall. At the next town election the billiard 
halls were voted out by a vote of 89 to 88. 

The small church buildings cannot well be adapted to meet 
the requirements, even in a small way, of the institutional 
church. The movement toward the federation of American 
churches has affected the small towns very little. There is, 
however, a tendency toward cooperation among the churches 
of the same town. Ministerial associations, union meetings 
and interchange of pulpits among the pastors, are indications 
of this cooperative spirit. In a recent study of the recreation 
facilities and social activities of the churches of Nebraska, 
it was found that out of thirty villages and towns in Classes I 
and II, there were twelve ministerial associations. In only 
five of the twelve towns, were all the pastors members of the 
association. There is little evidence of loss of denominational 
identity, though there is evidence of the breaking down of de- 
nominational prejudices. As has been pointed out, many 
changes seem necessary before much progress can be made by 
religious organizations towards meeting social obligations and 
recreational needs. So it appears that fuller utilization of 
present church plants for recreation purposes cannot be ex- 
pected in the near future. 

Chautauquas and lecture courses are not always easily 
maintained, though forty-three of the towns hold chautauquas 
and thirty-nine have lecture courses. The character of the 
programs offered by these organizations has changed within 
the last two decades. There has been a constant tendency in 
both cases to offer entertainment courses rather than solid 
lectures, and other heavy matter. This change has undoubt- 
edly helped to place these recreational activities in almost every 
town and city. A lecture course consists generally of from 
four to seven numbers. The chautauquas last from five to ten 
days. 

No attempt has been made to secure data for all of the 
religious, philanthropic and social agencies. The number and 
complexity of these agencies make them very bewildering, 
for here are included social and philanthropic clubs, associations 
of all sorts, and fraternal orders. These organizations are 
characterized generally by the narrowness of their purposes. 
Each is usually built around a single idea, or a group of closely 
related ideas, and in striving to attain its desired end or ends, 
does not readily cooperate with other social forces. This keeps 



USE OF RECREATIONAL FACILITIES 67 

most of the activities rather closely confined to a more or less 
selected membership. For these reasons, many of the relig- 
gious, philanthropic and social agencies cannot be classed as 
public, but are rather semi-private, and the numerous recrea- 
tional facilities that are common to them cannot be considered 
as subject to utilization by the public. Their recreational ac- 
tivities are generally restricted to the membership. The more 
serious purposes of these organizations are usually presented 
in contacts with the public. 

Not enough community buildings are in use in these 
towns, and their growth has been too recent to enable one 
to determine to what extent the facilities offered by such 
buildings would be utilized by the public for play and recrea- 
tion. Only three of the forty-six towns report community 
buildings. The term "community building" varies in meaning 
for each community, so the local definition of the term is neces- 
sary in order to know just what it includes or does not include. 

One so-called community building or community center 
consists of a public library with club rooms in the basement; 
(80: 7.) another provides a library, gymnasium, swimming 
pool, auditorium and social rooms ; while the third one is a 
Y. M. C. A. building and public library, in which are housed 
a complete City Y. M. C. A., a High School Y. W. C. A., and a 
public library. The basement rooms of the library of the 
third building are used by various local clubs, and the gym- 
nasium of the Y. M. C. A. is also used as an auditorium. Social 
and game rooms are provided in each of the Association sections 
of the building. The gymnasium is used by the two Asso- 
ciations. As an auditorium, the large gymnasium is used for 
lecture courses, festivals, banquets, local talent plays, various 
public school activities, etc. 

The play and recreational facilities offered in this third 
building are used constantly. The actual uses of this build- 
ing from January 1, 1917, to June 1, 1917, as reported by the 
secretary of the Y. M. C. A. and the librarian of the public 
library, are as follows : public meetings, 23 ; lectures, 6 ; public 
school exercises, 3; local plays, 3; socials, 11; banquets and 
"feeds," 5; gymnasium classes, 62; special stunts, 8; other 
play and recreation uses, 28. This .makes a total of 149 uses 
in six months. 

Not one of these community buildings is maintained en- 
tirely by taxation. Only the public library part is so supported. 



68 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

The other facilities are provided by voluntary contributions, 
and fees, rents and donations from local organizations, and 
others that use the buildings. 

The facts presented clearly show that there is generally 
a wide use made of public play and recreation facilities. Gov- 
ernment is not apt to provide for that which is not used, and 
is very slow to take over new activities, or those that have 
previously been cared for by non-governmental organizations 
or agencies. This conservatism on the part of city govern- 
ments is the chief cause of the inadequacy of governmental 
provisions for public play and recreation, and of their failure 
to allow the public to fully utilize the play and recreation 
facilities at governmental command. The limited uses of city 
halls, libraries and school buildings are examples of these re- 
strictions. 

The very existence of the commercial and incidental 
agencies is proof of public patronage. The adoption and ex- 
tension of means of play and recreation by religious, philan- 
thropic and social agencies, as an aid in attaining their desired 
ends, is certain evidence of public demand and public response. 

The trend of public opinion with reference to public play 
and recreation, as expressed in the responses of the mayors, 
given in division C of this chapter, and the trend of public 
action along the same lines as expressed by the erection, and 
movements for the erection of community buildings, are in- 
dicative of the inadequacy and the inefficiency of present facil- 
ities for public play and recreation in these villages and cities. 

E. The Evaluation and Meaning of the Complex and Over- 
Lapping Agencies of Public Play and Recreation 

From the evidence produced in the preceding divisions of 
this chapter it appears that the complex and almost system- 
less and non-cooperative agencies of public play and recrea- 
tion in the forty-six cities and towns of Nebraska are not pro- 
viding adequate and efficient facilities for public play and 
leisure. The means of public play and recreation seem to be as 
fully utilized as controlling authorities will permit. The nu- 
merous facilities provided in these towns, and the trend of pub- 
lic action and public opinion towards the extension of these 
facilities are facts full of significance. 

It is the chief purpose of this division to account for the 



MEANING OF OVER-LAPPING AGENCIES 69 

growing demand in these towns for play and recreation out- 
side of the home, and to attempt to determine why these ac- 
tivities are being assumed by agencies that formerly almost 
entirely discarded them. 

The inventory of the public play and recreation facilities 
given in division C of this chapter discloses the fact that the 
recreational features of these towns do not differ much in 
kind from those of the large cities. In these provisions at 
least the small town seems to be a large city in miniature. 
The replies of the mayors, and the inventory itself, point to- 
ward the tendency of the small town to transplant into its 
midst the activities of the big city. 

Nebraska is essentially an agricultural state. In 1910, 
73.9 per cent of the inhabitants lived in rural districts — that 
is, outside of incorporated places having 2,500 inhabitants 
or more. The largest city in the state (Omaha) had a popu- 
lation of 124,096, and there were two cities (South Omaha 
and Lincoln) having between 25,000 and 50,000 inhabitants 
each. At that time there was one city with a population of 
10,000; nine between 5,000 and 10,000; and twelve between 
2,500 and 5,000. (109: 2-4.) 

According to the classification of the United States Census 
Bureau, the villages and cities under consideration in this 
study are parts of rural communities. A study of the dis- 
tribution of the forty-six villages and cities shows that one 
place is in direct contact with Lincoln. Twelve are between 
twenty and fifty miles from Lincoln, and five are between 
twenty and fifty miles from Omaha. Omitting the cities that 
are counted twice in the over-lapping of the fifty mile radii 
from Omaha and Lincoln, there are nine places out of the 
forty-six that are between twenty and fifty miles from these 
cities, and one place in contact with Lincoln. There is one 
city outside of the state (Sioux City, Iowa) as large as Lin- 
coln that is within fifty miles of three places not included in 
the distances from Omaha and Lincoln. 

The cities of Nebraska are not connected by interurban 
electric railways. The southeast one-fourth of the state is 
quite well supplied with railroads. There are over 6,000 miles 
of railroads in the state. Excellent public highways are com- 
mon throughout the state, and automobiles are in common use 
all over the state. 



70 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

While facilities for travel are good, at least in the south- 
east one-third of the state, the distance of most of the towns 
studied from the only two cities of the state that can be classed 
as large cities, is so great that it practically precludes very 
much influence of these two cities by direct contact with the 
smaller places. Evidently the tendency of these smaller places 
to adopt and adapt the recreational features of large cities 
cannot be caused by direct influence of large cities. Most of 
these towns are located in rich agricultural regions, and, 
so far as distance from one another, or from more densely 
populated places, is concerned, are isolated communities. 

When one considers that the rural population of the 
United States in 1910 was 53.7 per cent of the total popula- 
tion, and that in individual states there was a variation in 
rural population from 3.3 per cent in Rhode Island, to 88.5 
per cent in Mississippi, the ruralness of Nebraska becomes 
more significant. The ruralness is even more apparent when 
we consider the number of dwellings, and the number of fam- 
ilies in the state. According to the census of 1910 there were 
258,967 dwellings, and 265,549 families in Nebraska. That 
is, only in a very few cases did more than one family occupy 
a dwelling. (110: 51.) Only seventeen states have a higher 
per cent of rural population than has Nebraska. Nearly four- 
fifths of the land area of the state is in farms. 

Nebraska's population is typically American. In 1910, 
53.9 per cent were native born whites of native parents ; 30.4 
per cent were native born whites of foreign or mixed parents ; 
and 14.8 per cent were foreign born whites. In the United 
States as a whole, 14.7 per cent of the population is for- 
eign born. Of the foreign born whites in Nebraska in 1910, 
32.6 per cent were German ; 13.9 per cent, Austrian ; 13.2 per 
cent, Swedish ; 7.8 per cent, Danish ; 7.4 per cent, Russian ; 4.6 
per cent, Irish; 4.6 per cent, English; 4.2 per cent, Canadian; 
2.2 per cent, Italian; 2 per cent, Greek; other countries, 7.9 
per cent. (110: 44 and 50.) 

These facts relating to the composition and distribution 
of population, resources, and industries of Nebraska are given 
here in order to emphasize the fact that the forty-six towns 
under consideration are essentially isolated rural commun- 
ities, located in agricultural regions, and have a representa- 
tive American population. A ten-minute walk in any direc- 



MEANING OF OVER-LAPPING AGENCIES 71 

tion from the center of almost any town in the list would take 
one out into the country, into open cultivated fields. 

In chapter iii are enumerated some of the important in- 
fluences that have in recent years caused the play and recre- 
ation problem to occupy an increasingly prominent place in 
public interest. Perhaps, the factors of the problem as dis- 
cussed in that chapter may not carry the same values when 
applied to conditions in small towns. A re-examination of 
some of these factors with special reference to their applica- 
tions to the case in hand, may help toward the purpose of 
this division. Physical isolation does not necessarily carry 
with it social isolation, nor does physical proximity insure 
socialization. "Persons do not become a society by living in 
physical proximity, any more than a man ceases to be socially 
influenced by being so many feet or miles removed from 
others. A book or a letter may institute a more intimate as- 
sociation between human beings separated thousands of miles 
from each other, than exists between dwellers under the same 
roof." (26: 5.) Though these towns may not know condi- 
tions in large cities by the actual social contact of a great 
number of their inhabitants with those conditions, there are 
many other means by which they may be drawn into the great 
current of national social consciousness, which is now essen- 
tially municipal, for, municipalities are the real growing 
points of our nation. National social consciousness as here 
used is due to "the awareness of resemblances and of differ- 
ences," (40: 66.) and is a more or less conscious recognition 
and response of the local social mind to national stimuli or 
to social forces that are acting throughout the nation. 

Among the agencies or means through which these com- 
munities are brought into contact with the social forces of the 
nation, the most potent are, travel, literature and the press, 
education, commercial effort, and social betterment move- 
ments. 

Travel includes all the influences that are brought to 
these towns by transients or by residents who have made ex- 
tensive trips to other parts. When one considers the excellent 
facilities and the wide uses made of them, the importance of 
travel as a socializing factor, is evident. The general use 
of the automobile and the common practice of making long 
vacation and excursion trips, have within the last few years 



72 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

much augmented this influence. Travel is usually in itself a 
form of recreation, and unusual recreational activities are 
apt to appeal strongly to the traveler, and to be reported at 
home. 

Another important means of socialization by personal 
contact is provided through the various forms of higher edu- 
cation. The population of Nebraska increased 11.8 per cent 
during the decade ending in 1910. During the same period 
the enrollment at the State University increased 70 per cent. 
The estimate made by the United States Census Bureau, Jan- 
uary, 1917, showed an increase of 14 per cent in the popula- 
tion of the state since the census of 1910. From 1910 to 1917 
the enrollment at the State University increased 71 per cent. 
Other educational institutions of the state have grown rapidly. 
This growth means a more general dissemination of the pro- 
ducts of higher education. The recent trend toward the so- 
cialization of education more and more makes students car- 
riers and distributors of socializing forces. The fact that 
more than 400 students at the State University during the 
school year, 1916-17, were from the forty-six towns here con- 
sidered, is an indication of the distribution of these influ- 
ences. The various phases of school extension work, chau- 
tauquas, and lecture courses, are other definite educational 
means that tend to unify thought and action, and to establish 
a social consciousness. 

As has been shown in a previous chapter, play and recre- 
ation have in recent years been recognized as forming a part 
of a complete educational program. The dissemination of 
progressive education necessarily carries with it better care 
of play and leisure. (26: 241.) 

Commercial advertising in newspapers and magazines is 
based upon the belief that they are potent forces in getting 
people to do things. (31: 93.) Books and periodicals on so- 
cial subjects have appeared with great rapidity in the last 
quarter of a century. A new or an unusual piece of social 
work is soon in print, and made available to the people 
through the small or large public library. Newspapers and 
magazines abound in material dealing with amusements, pleas- 
ure resorts, sports and kindred topics. As a rule they em- 
phasize the superiority of urban life. The popular magazines 
reflect the life of the great city. Most of them are published 



MEANING OF OVER-LAPPING AGENCIES 73 

in New York City. (100: 188.) By actual count, out of the 
list of magazines and periodicals classed by Severance under 
the title "Literary," thirty-four of the forty-seven leading 
publications, are printed in New York City. Five are published 
in Boston, four in Chicago, three in Philadelphia and one in 
San Francisco. (104.) This list was made in 1914. At pres- 
ent the Curtis publications and "The Atlantic" are the only 
generally circulating, standard magazines published outside 
of New York City. Print is one of the silent factors that dis- 
turbs provincialism and aids in the formation of the larger 
social consciousness. 

Commercial agencies are quick to grasp the monetary 
value of a dynamic social mind, so they strive to introduce 
into the small towns metropolitan commercial practices. The 
prestige of the big city in these matters makes this compara- 
tively easy. "Metropolitan fashions, amusements, pastimes, 
drinks, topical songs, books and magazines enjoy everywhere 
the right of way," (100: 188.) not alone because the smaller 
communities consciously imitate the city, but also because 
commercial agencies cultivate and exploit the racial tendency 
or instinct of gregariousness. (114:85-88.) Perhaps, Gerald 
Stanley Lee is not far from the truth when he says : "We live 
in crowds. We get our living in crowds. We are amused in 
crowds. Civilization is a list of cities." (66: 191.) Ross 
asserts that New York City leads the nation in matters of 
fancy, taste and caprice. He says: "Foreign artists, singers, 
actors, musicians and lecturers make their debut there, and 
the verdict of the metropolitan critics gives the cue to the 
rest of the country. Books, plays and operas are launched in 
New York." (100: 188.) In chapter iii, is a discussion of 
the influence of New York City in fixing recreational stand- 
ards. 

It is in the field of activities that appeal primarily to the 
emotions and feelings that the prestige of the great city is 
most powerful. Congestion, leisure and commercial greed pro- 
duce a combination of forces that are apt to lead to dissipat- 
ing forms of recreation. Congestion itself tends to lead to 
crime and immorality. (68: 53.) It is the sex appeal in 
one form or another that gives the holding power to the the- 
atre and the motion picture show. (38: 43-47.) Perhaps, 
none of the other instincts or original tendencies of man are 



74 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

so potent for making or unmaking right character as the sex 
instinct. The theatre, the motion picture show and the public 
dance are the common forms of public recreation that make 
strong appeals to this instinct, and these appeals are often 
perversive. 

The various lines of commercial effort tend to stimulate 
local social mind by provoking wants, and satisfying desires. 
These wants and desires may lead to better social conditions, 
or may not. American capital is looking for productive chan- 
nels of investment, and is not always particular about result- 
ing social values. Probably no other important social force 
loses so little of its metropolitan momentum in passing to the 
smaller places as does commercialized public recreation. 

Social betterment movements usually develop in large 
cities as the results of attempts to solve specific, pressing 
social problems. The local need is great. Some citizen or 
group of citizens sees the need, and through organized effort 
attempts to relieve it. If successful, and somewhat spectacu- 
lar, the movement quickly spreads to other cities and soon 
reaches the small towns. Somber success is slower but passes 
the same way. A recent striking example of the rapid spread 
of a somewhat spectacular social practice is seen in the growth 
of the community or municipal Christmas tree. The first 
community Christmas tree was placed in Madison Square, 
New York City, during the Christmas season of 1912. It 
was inspired by the loneliness of a young American student 
in a strange German town during the holiday season of 1911. 
He resolved that on the following Christmas he would, if 
possible, provide a Christmas tree for lonely people. He told 
his experience to a friend in New York City. She conceived 
the idea of a public Christmas tree. (67: 415.) Ten thous- 
and people gathered about the tree on Christmas Eve. Christ- 
mas spirit, common underlying racial tradition, and instinctive 
curiosity made it a success. "The American cities represent 
the debris of Europe's social tradition. It can never be res- 
urrected in any literal way, but by community action as such, 
it can be re-created in far richer and deeper kind." (67: 415.) 
This tree appealed to social groups — to old world traditions — 
common to the cosmopolitan population of New York City. 
Its appeal aroused community sentiment, and for a little time 
there was the pulsation of community life. There are all 



MEANING OF OVER-LAPPING AGENCIES 75 

sorts of seeds in American social soil. Community habits 
of gladness and friendliness and symbolic days will cause them 
to grow. (67: 416.) 

Newspaper and magazine descriptions carried this tree 
to the farthest corners of the nation. More than three hun- 
dred cities in the United States had community Christmas 
trees in 1915. (28: 6.) A committee called the 'Tree of Light 
Committee'* with headquarters at New York City distributes 
free of charge suggestions and directions for organizing and 
managing community Christmas tree celebrations. Data are 
not at hand to give the exact number, but many community 
Christmas trees were given in the towns of Nebraska in 1916. 

The rise of various forms of community music illustrates 
the second type, or a somewhat slower growth of a social 
movement that at present in some of its forms permeates al- 
most every community, large or small. The present status 
of this movement as a national social force, seems to be best 
expressed in "A Call to a National Conference on Community 
Music," issued in April, 1917, by twelve leading members of 
important organizations, "devoted to various aspects of this 
movement." This conference was held in New York City, May 
31, and June 1, 1917. The development and purposes of the 
movement are given in the call as follows : "The Community 
Music Movement has in the space of a few years risen to im- 
mense proportions in America, bringing to the people of the 
nation a new message of unity, of patriotism, of brotherhood 
in song, and of universal expression in beauty and joy. 

"It is well recognized that the movement is identified 
with a new current of social consciousness which carries its 
significance far beyond that pertaining to the special field of 
musical art in itself. The movement recognizes fully the place 
and value of a high development of artistic refinement, but in 
its present stage it exists primarily to liberate the spirit of 
the people through free participation in great forms of com- 
munal expression." (73:1.) 

The relation of community music to other social move- 
ments is thus described in the conference call. "Among the 
many activities and organizations touching the Community 
Music movement there may be mentioned: municipal con- 
certs, civic music associations, community choruses, symphony 
and other concerts at popular prices, community Christmas 



76 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

trees with music, community orchestras, and school choruses, 
pageants and community masques and dramas, music school 
settlements, musical activities in settlements generally, peoples 
institutes, social centers, the recreation movement, Americani- 
zation and patriotic societies, and many others. ,, (73: 1.) 

Few of these musical activities have yet reached the small 
towns. In twenty-seven of the forty-six towns of this study, 
summer concerts, or other music is provided by the city, and 
paid for entirely, or in part by city funds. Only since 1915 
has the state legislature permitted a tax to be collected for 
this purpose. A music supervisor is a part of the public teach- 
ing force in twenty-five of the forty-six towns. (75.) Ten years 
ago only twelve of these towns had music supervisors. (76.) 
School choruses, orchestras, festivals and other musical ac- 
tivities of a like character, are common in towns that provide 
a music supervisor for the public schools. Community sing- 
ing has appeared in a few Nebraska towns. The first Inter- 
Community Conference held under the auspices of the Ne- 
braska Federation of Musical Clubs met at Lincoln, Novem- 
ber 25, 1916. An inter-community concert and community 
singing were important features of this meeting. 

These recent developments of musical activities are not 
new. They are old forms modified to fit social conditions. 
The singing school of the past was a form of community 
music ; it was often community singing. Social readjustments 
caused chiefly by the rapid growth of cities, changed indus- 
trial conditions, immigration and the struggle for wealth, for 
a time seemed to have made impossible, or to have drawn the 
people away from many former social and recreational prac- 
tices. Rural communities have lost many of their saving 
forms of entertainment and recreation. Urban communities, 
primarily industrial centers, caring little and thinking little 
of social conservation, have permitted public leisure to be 
preyed upon by the dominant force of the city — commercial- 
ism. Perversive appeals to deep-seated racial instincts have 
been carried too far. Perverted and distorted forms of music 
have been used for commercialized, dissipative purposes until 
a sort of social revulsion seems to have taken place. 

"Music more than any other mode of expression, is a 

language of the feelings We can say that music is the 

expression of the mind of man that is larger and deeper than 



MEANING OF OVER-LAPPING AGENCIES 77 

the consciousness of the individual. It comes from the generic 
and ancestral life, and appeals to the racial in us." (85: 
272-3.) Modern industrial conditions give little chance for 
the expression or appreciation of music in connection with 
work. Machinery and efficiency interfere. This is true not 
only in the large factory and shop, but also in small industrial 
plants and mercantile establishments of all kinds. Music is 
permissible only when it helps to sell something. Formerly, 
people in practically all occupations sang at their work, "but 
in these days there is a terrible silence of humanity while 
at work." (39: 454-5.) The shadoof men along the Nile 
River as they perform their monotonous tasks hour after hour, 
with their primitive tools, are said to chant weird songs as 
they work. (11: 3.) In America, we have more efficient ma- 
chinery and more efficient men, but the men are not as happy 
as they work, as are the shadoof men of the Nile. 

The recognition of these industrial conditions and the 
commercial perversion of racial desire have been the chief 
factors in bringing about the community music movement. 
There has been a natural reversion to old forms of expression. 
"We are all animals in captivity, and we eagerly seize every 
kind of vicarious function which can give at least a memory 
of the life from which we are excluded." (54: 28.) So the 
artificiality of modern congestion finally seeks relief in social 
practices of a simpler past. Community music in its various 
forms, appears as an expression of an effort to recover an 
almost lost force for social betterment. Dr. Rose Yont after 
a very careful survey of the entire field of music, states that 
in general the cultural value of music in the United States 
has never before been so keenly appreciated as at the present 
time. (123: 224-29.) 

The social center movement is ten years old. It is 
now called the community center movement. Whatever name 
is given to it, it is little more than a re-discovery of local 
social consciousness, a recognition of a neighborhood feeling 
which was formerly characteristic of rural settlements. The 
process of urbanization tends to dissipate cooperative inter- 
est, except in things that finally lead to monetary values. So- 
cial neighborhood life almost disappears under such condi- 
tions. Social isolation is almost complete in the large apart- 
ment houses of a great city. Social isolation is one of the 



78 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

results of excessive congestion. Even the school house may 
become an institution unrelated to the community, except as 
a place supported by public taxation, to which parents are 
forced to send their children five days in the week for nine 
months in the year. 

Edward J. Ward, the leader in the organization of the 
first social center in the United States, at Rochester, New 
York, July 5, 1907, defines the social center as follows : "The 
Social Center of any community is the common gathering 
place, the head-and-heart quarters, of the society whose mem- 
bers are the people of the community." (116 : 1.) The move- 
ment has developed very rapidly. In 1916, there were at least 
500 community centers in the United States. (19:12.) The 
community center is much larger in its purpose as at present 
conceived than was the original social center. The first Na- 
tional Conference on Community Centers was held in New 
York City in April, 1916. The second was held at Chicago 
in April, 1917. At the first conference Dr. Gulick said: "The 
community center is a social structure for the promotion of 
friendliness, which is the most important thing in the world. 
The product of the community center is friendship, and the 
community center is to be judged by the quantity and quality 
of friendship it produces, just as a factory is to be judged by 
the quantity and quality of its output." (45: 9.) "The com- 
munity center is not a place. It is the people organized for 
the enrichment of life and for common action." So said John 
Collier at the same conference. He further states, "Its aim 
is that the common life of, by and for the people shall not per- 
ish." (19: 12.) Throughout all the discussions of the aims 
and purposes of the community center there runs the idea 
that the movement is primarily to care for public leisure, to 
utilize leisure as a recuperative force, instead of allowing it 
to continue as it has been and now is, in a large measure, a 
dissipative force. 

As was shown in division D of this chapter, the terms, 
community center and community building, are used in small 
places to designate local development, and so vary much in 
meaning. The village of Elgin, Antelope County, in the north- 
central part of Nebraska, furnishes an example of a peculiar 
development of a community movement. Elgin has a com- 
munity club. Through this club an effort is being made to 



MEANING OF OVER-LAPPING AGENCIES 79 

unite village and country social forces for the welfare of all. 
The club is financed by a fee collected from each member, and 
is a legally capitalized corporation. Karl W. G. Miller, the 
organizer of the club, in describing its activities says: "This 
club now is engaged in the work of transforming the town 
opera house into a community building, which will house all 
the activities of the organization. There being no other theater 
or public hall in the town, this virtually means that all 'shows' 
and other public entertainment features will be placed under 
the supervision of this association of public spirited citizens 
who will be guided by a sense of the community good rather 
than of the dollar. But amusements constitute only a part 
of the activities to be taken up by this club." (53.) 

Elgin has a population of about 900. Governmental in- 
fluence does not enter into the management of this club ex- 
cept in an advisory capacity. The village officers, the county 
superintendent of schools, and the village school teachers are 
consulted with reference to community welfare work, but offi- 
cial position does not carry with it any special power, and no 
public money is used by the club. (53.) 

Pleasant Dale, a village of about 300 people in Seward 
County, has a community club with the public school building 
as the center. Its purpose is "to give good and wholesome 
entertainment to the people of the community." (88.) This 
community club is evidently an extension of the idea of the 
school "literary society" of years ago. 

Whatever form these community movements may take, 
there is evidence in all of them of the influence of the original 
social center idea, and their rapid rise throughout the nation 
in cities and villages, large and small, is certain proof of pub- 
lic social and recreational needs. 

Reverting again to the discussion of the factors that have 
pushed play and recreation into the forefront of public con- 
cern, as given in chapter iii, it is necessary to re-examine 
in detail some of the forces there enumerated in order to at- 
tempt to account for the growing demand for public recrea- 
tion in small towns. Why are the agencies, through which 
these communities are brought into contact with the social 
forces of the nation, so powerful ? Are the commonly accepted 
agencies of civilization — the home, the church, the school, the 
vocation, and the state — individually equally potent in the big 



80 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

city, and in the small town? That is, for example, does the 
home in the big city count for as much in the sum total of 
metropolitan civilization, as does the home in the small town, 
in its civilization? 

Admitting that the five agencies of civilization do "con- 
serve the past, preserve the present, and make possible a pro- 
gressive future," (56: 1.) is it possible to determine, even in 
a general way, the varying influence exerted by each agency 
at any given time and place ? 

All the elements of civilization were in the primitive 
home. Considering civilization as an indefinite series of con- 
stantly enlarging concentric circles, the home is the center 
of all the circles and is the center-most circle. From it has 
radiated all civilization. As the radii have lengthened, the 
other agencies have been thrown off from the home, and have 
become distinct portions of the ever enlarging part-sectors. 
Thus in general, the home portion of the part-sectors, the 
primary agency, has constantly decreased in proportion to 
the total area lying between any two consecutive circumfer- 
ences. The relative proportions of the five part-sectors have 
varied at different times and with different peoples at the same 
time. No attempt can be made here to trace these variations 
through the mazes of the past. A recognition of their exist- 
ence, however, is essential. 

A civilization is never static. The circles are ever vary- 
ing. The part-sectors continually change proportions. As the 
circles enlarge there is a constant tendency for new part- 
sectors to appear, formed by activities that grow out of and 
become institutions not dependent upon the other sectors. A 
new part -sector is thus another secondary agency of civiliza- 
tion which is not functionally dependent upon the older sec- 
tors. 

A civilization is never uniformly distributed even among 
the most homogeneous people; the factors or agencies that 
form the civilization may be the same in number and general 
character. There is an American civilization, and a German 
civilization, but each of these civilizations varies probably as 
much within itself as the two national ideals vary from each 
other. "Civilization is a kind of a mould that each nation is 
busy making for itself to shape its men and women according 



MEANING OF OVER-LAPPING AGENCIES 81 

to its best ideal." (108 : 13.) This mould is variable, or there 
could be no movement forward or backward. 

This variation of the civilization of an apparently homo- 
geneous nation is due largely to the unequal distribution 
among the people of the fundamental agencies of civilization. 
If the sectors were proportionally constant throughout the 
nation the civilization would be more nearly uniform. Why 
do the sectors vary so widely? 

The division of the population, by the United States Cen- 
sus Bureau, into rural and urban is not merely a convenience 
of classification. Of course, the government definition of ur- 
ban is purely arbitrary, but there is a fundamental basis for 
the two divisions. Urban civilization differs from rural civ- 
ilization. 

"The physical development of Humanity since its earliest 
stages has been largely due to the reaction of individuals upon 
one another in those various relations which we characterize 
as social." (34: 66.) Human beings never normally live in 
isolation — savage and civilized men alike dwell in groups. 
(41: 81.) They are always more or less dependent upon one 
another and upon physical environment. People as a rule live 
where they can live easiest and attain the greatest amount of 
pleasure, so regions or places favored by nature tend to at- 
tract human beings. Individuals react upon one another more 
readily when they are near to one another. "Aggregation is 
itself a condition favorable to further aggregation." (41 : 87.) 
Highly favored spots in regions favorable to aggregation, 
aided by man's transforming powers have become great gan- 
glia of populations. (57.) In very recent times some of these 
ganglia are placed and developed by business enterprises, al- 
most regardless of natural fitness. Accumulated wealth and 
modern transportation facilities have made this possible. 
Ganglia or urban populations are called agglomerations; the 
ordinary aggregations are rural. Agglomerations may be 
termed the cerebra of civilization. So, the division of the pop- 
ulation into urban and rural is really based upon physical and 
psychical differences, and is as old as civilization itself. 

As has been shown in the first part of this division, re- 
cent changes in the various means of communication have 
made it possible for metropolitan social forces to pass easily 
and rapidly into nature-favored rural communities, regard- 



82 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

less of the distance of these communities from great agglom- 
erative centers. The rapid urbanization of rural regions in 
general is an accepted fact of American social life, but the 
metropolitan character of this urbanization has not been duly 
considered. 

The first hand influence of the big city, especially in mat- 
ters relating to emotional life, has been noted in another part 
of this division. The very existence of rural and urban popu- 
lations in a given region accounts for much of the variation 
of the sectors of the civilization of that region. It is not neces- 
sarily the difference in the quantity that marks the distinc- 
tion between urban and rural. It is the proportional distri- 
bution of the sectors. The total area of the two circles may 
be the same. As urbanization becomes more complete the 
sectors approach one another in proportional area. 

The magnification of one sector is apt to cause a diminu- 
tion in one or more of the other sectors in the same circle ; or 
in other words, an increase in the functions of one agency of 
civilization is likely to be at the expense of one or more of 
the other agencies. 

In chapter ii, the social complications arising from con- 
gestion of populations are considered with special reference 
to public play and recreation. It is shown in that chapter 
that the home has undergone marked changes, chiefly as a 
result of congestion, which is largely an outgrowth of mod- 
ern industrialism. In the communities under consideration, 
there is no real problem of congestion. There are, of course, 
in each of these rural agglomerations, a few families living 
in the up town "blocks," that is, on the second floor or possi- 
bly the third floor, of store and office buildings, and there is at 
least one slum district in which there are a few over-populated 
houses. There is, however, no over-populated district. The 
houses have open spaces about them and there is usually a 
garden attached to each. Very few, if any, homes are half a 
mile from the public park, open fields, or open play spaces 
on vacant lots. The streets of western towns are wide and 
the blocks are not large. Congestion per se cannot be an im- 
portant factor in changing home conditions in these towns. 

The owned home is not passing away in the small towns 
as it is in the large cities, as is shown in the chapter referred 
to above, though there is a gradual increase throughout the 



MEANING OF OVER-LAPPING AGENCIES 83 

nation in the number of rented homes. (110: 1295.) How- 
ever, the industrial changes of the past fifty years have had 
much to do with the small-town home. There is no home in- 
dustrial group. The members of a family usually engage 
in diverse vocations. There is not the bond of common in- 
terest that formerly bound the family together. The indi- 
vidual vocational duties and interests of the members of the 
family take them outside of the home circle for at least half 
of their waking hours. Social ties and groups are formed, 
based largely upon these outside interests. These draw away 
from the home during hours of leisure. The shorter work day 
gives also in these towns more hours of leisure. The misfits 
in occupations and the consequent perversions of leisure are 
at least as common as in the large cities. 

Other factors strengthen this tendency toward family 
disintegration. The taking over by the public schools of much 
of child and youth training that was formerly given by the 
home, has transferred some interest from the home to the 
school. Some assert that this training reflects back into the 
home and improves it. The movement is too new, and pres- 
ent social changes are too complex to measure accurately the 
results of this transference. However, there must be some 
loss to the home when the child looks to the school instead of 
to the parents for home training, social activities, and play 
direction. Not alone in matters of discipline, does the teacher 
of the present stand in loco parentis. 

The multiplicity of church activities in these small towns 
has been described. Religious training has largely passed 
out of the home into the church. The Sunday school is slowly 
adapting public school principles and practices to religious 
training. Religious training is being approached through 
social service. The Sunday school is beginning to take the place 
of parents in other matters besides religion. The church is 
very slowly adjusting itself to meet constantly growing social 
and recreational needs. 

This study of Nebraska cities and villages has brought out 
the fact that there is a marked tendency in these small places 
to provide some means of leisure and recreation as a public 
utility to be paid for by public taxation. Public parks, public 
libraries, municipal music, school gymnasiums, and occasionally 
city halls are facilities through which this is usually done. 



84 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

These activities are not new in the large city, but they are in 
most cases recent developments in these towns. That there 
is a growing demand for the enlargement of public provisions 
for play and recreation, has been pointed out in division D of 
this chapter. The recent permissive leisure and recreation 
legislation on the part of the state is further evidence of this. 
(See division B of this chapter.) These public means of play 
and recreation have not grown directly out of the home. They 
are rather the expression of a growing community conscious- 
ness of scoial maladjustment, and their use and the trend of 
public opinion in regard to them, are certainly indicative of the 
failure of the other agencies to supply and safeguard play 
and recreation. 

The inventory of public play and recreation facilities, and 
the uses made of them clearly show that a large share of public 
play and recreation is provided by private concerns, or indi- 
viduals as a business proposition. There is in most cases a 
sort of legal supervision which is often little more than nom- 
inal, or at its best suppressive and regulative. There is no 
legal supervision in case of many of these activities, so many 
of the facilities for public recreation are provided by what 
might be called an unattached, free-lance, composite agency. 

The meaning, which the cumbersome term just used in- 
tends to carry, needs to be made clearer. Recurring again 
to the conception of civilization as a series of concentric circles, 
with the home as the center and the central circle, it will be 
recalled that the four secondary agencies of civilization de- 
veloped from this center ; also that a civilization at any given 
time is the total area made up of the five part-sectors, including 
more or less varying parts attached to these sectors, plus other 
free portions in process of forming a new sector or agency. 
It is these free portions to which the term unattached free- 
lance, composite agency applies. 

The industrial revolution, the socializing and homeish 
tendencies in education, the social service movement in the 
church, and the remarkable expansion of governmental func- 
tions, especially in municipalities, are, as has been pointed out, 
the most potent factors that have been in recent times, and are 
at present, working toward the dissociation of the home. The 
industries have gone from the home. The household is no 
longer an industrial plant. Another agency takes care of that 
field of activity. Parents are no longer teachers or trainers 



MEANING OF OVER-LAPPING AGENCIES 85 

of their children. Formal education, all phases of vocational 
training, and moral and religious instruction have in a large 
measure passed over into other institutions. Authority over 
individuals in the ordinary situations of life, even in the home, 
and provisions for human welfare in general, have been in 
many cases assumed by government, particularly by municipal 
government. The home, minus the various definite activities 
that have been transferred to these agencies, and minus other 
less definite activities that have passed over into what has been 
called the free-lance composite agency, seems to be in the 
throes of an acute, social readjustment. The future influence 
of the home is problematic. One thing seems certain, the re- 
habilitation of either the rural or urban home of the past is 
impossible. Perhaps, this rehabilitation is neither necessary 
nor desirable. 

Social readjustments are often hindered by institutional 
conservatism, and institutional sanguineness. A fixated in- 
stitution is usually slow to assume a new function, (69: 12.) 
and the institution that parts with it is apt to be over-sanguine 
of the results accruing from the transplanting. The attitude 
of the school toward recently acquired activities, and the re- 
sulting high expectations of the home and the vocation, are 
examples of this readjustment. The home in this social re- 
adjustment seems to look to other agencies to do what it 
should be able to do for itself. The school is already heavily 
loaded with home and vocation functions. The church is as- 
suming former home duties. The state through the school 
and other channels of municipal government is providing and 
controlling many former home activities. 

This more or less abstract discussion of the causes and re- 
sults of the dissociation of the home and of the consequent 
social readjustments, may seem somewhat far afield in this 
connection. However, a reconsideration of the facts of this 
chapter clearly indicates that, in the main, the agencies of 
civilization affect the small towns and cities here considered 
in the same way that they do the large cities. The above state- 
ments concerning the home as applied to the large cities, are 
generally accepted, or have been supported in previous chap- 
ters. The instability of the home and its maladjustment to 
present social conditions are recognized facts. (43 : Chap. 13.) 

The underlying cause of this social unrest and of the so- 
cial maladjustment of the home, are not so apparent, and 



86 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

the relation and application of these social disturbances to play 
and recreation, may seem remote and even visionary. The 
home is not a sentiment only. It is not merely a physical fact 
with a biological basis. A genetic study of the home shows 
that it has been both. As used here, it is the place in which, 
or at which, lives the basic monogamic family of two genera- 
tions — parents and children — plus the social complex that 
arises from responses to the situations growing out of close 
and constant association within the home, and contact 
with other institutions of civilization. Since the other in- 
stitutions have grown out of the home, the character of 
the home determines the character of civilization. The 
close and constant association of the individuals of the 
home is necessary for its complete functioning. Whatever 
disturbs or prevents this close association causes maladjust- 
ments of the agencies of civilization. The dissociation of the 
home has taken place because the members of the family have 
been forced out of the home to perform the functions that 
have become attached to the institutions that have developed 
from the home, (43: 413-27.) On account of these develop- 
ments and transfers, the close and constant association of 
the home has to a great extent been made impossible. No in- 
stitution has developed for this close association of the family 
outside of the home. The home has been in a great measure 
sacrificed in order to meet the needs, real or supposed, of these 
later institutions. The home has really become a secondary 
agency of civilization, subordinate to the institutions that have 
developed from it. Each attempts to adjust the home to fit 
its needs. Each of these functionally primary institutions 
has built up about itself more or less definite purposes, and 
social machinery for attaining these purposes. Although 
these later institutions are organically related to the home, 
the present status of the home indicates that there is no bond 
that holds them close enough to the home or to home-like 
fundamentals, to secure satisfactory social adjustments. 

There is normally a margin of leisure around the serious 
and essential interests of every institution or activity of mod- 
ern life. It has not always been so. Until within recent times 
there were two classes of people: 1. The working class, 2. 
The living class. The first class had little or no leisure; the 
second class really made civilization out of leisure time. (60 : 
19-20.) This margin is growing wider. (See Chapter II.) 



MEANING OF OVER-LAPPING AGENCIES 87 

Within this margin of public leisure, which includes the play 
of children, lie the activities which if organized into an insti- 
tution or sixth agency of civilization, would strengthen the 
home and help much in social adjustments. This margin, 
misunderstood and misused, accounts for many of the harm- 
ful elements of the free-lance composite agency of civilization. 
The margin of public leisure has in it the possibilities of an 
institution with purposes, plans of operation, and social ma- 
chinery as peculiar to itself as are these relations to any other 
agency of civilization. Such an institution may be called Recre- 
ation. This new institution could provide in a measure at least 
for the lost associations of the home, by grouping in a develop- 
mental system all the public play and recreation activities of 
the community, so that each family would have a recreation 
home, a common home-leisure center. 

The beginnings of this institution are seen in the efforts 
of governmental agencies to control and provide for public 
play and recreation, and in the attitude of religious, philan- 
thropic and social agencies toward leisure and recreation 
activities. The demand is shown by the general utilization of 
the various facilities provided, and also by the numerous un- 
related, systemless social betterment organizations and move- 
ments that are at present really institutionless, and inefficient 
in general application. The need is shown by the general ex- 
ploitations by commercial and incidental agencies of instinctive 
desires by over-stimulation and perversion, and by the dis- 
sociation of the home, and by the human and economic waste 
of the present means. 

The assumption on the part of cities of much of the re- 
sponsibility for public play and recreation is described in chap- 
ter iv. The large cities are spending vast sums of money, 
and making painstaking efforts to provide wholesome play and 
recreation. These efforts, however, are being made through 
existing agencies. In a few cities there seem to be the be- 
ginnings of a recreational institution. The fundamental dif- 
ferences between rural and urban conditions make it evident 
that the municipalization of play and recreation must pre- 
cede the complete institutionalizing of play and recreation, 
and that this municipalization must develop first in the large 
cities. Chapter iv, and divisions A, B, C and D of this chapter 
support this statement. 

While facilities for play and recreation in the forty-six 



88 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

small cities and villages are not provided by the municipalities 
to the extent that they are in the larger cities, there is con- 
clusive evidence that the tendency is decidedly in that direc- 
tion, and that the public demand, and the public need are al- 
most as urgent as they are in the larger cities. The factors 
of home dissociation are almost as pronounced in these small 
towns as in large cities, and the need of an institution to care 
for play and recreation is almost as great. Though this in- 
stitution is forming, these activities are at present generally 
cared for, or exploited by, other agencies. 



CHAPTER VI 
Conclusion 

Some conclusions, may with a fair degree of assurance, 
be drawn from the massing of the data submitted. Also, some 
suggestions for a possible municipal recreation system may 
be allowed. 

The provision and administration of public play and recre- 
ation is one of the most serious and important problems of 
government. It is especially a grave problem in the city. 
Congestion, industrialism, immigration, increase of leisure, 
and the consequent dissociation of the home, have been large 
factors in making this problem. Commercial exploitation of 
play and leisure has hurried public recognition of the serious- 
ness of the problem. Easy and rapid dissemination of social 
practices makes this problem much the same in cities large 
and small. 

Sufficient evidence has been given to establish the fact 
that big cities do in a large measure control the quality of the 
recreation of the people of the smaller towns. The smaller 
cities and villages pass their recreational practices to the 
most rural communities. In this sense municipal control of 
public recreation is an accomplished fact. The proper control 
of the recreational output of the big cities through their own 
institutional machinery is the key to the complicated problem. 

The main burden of this discussion has been to point out 
that large municipalities are recognizing and assuming recre- 
ational responsibilities, and in so doing are slowly developing 
a distinct instituton for the care of public play and leisure. 

It is within recent years that cities have undertaken to 
work out the leisure problem as a distinct problem. It has 
been dealt with as fragments of existing institutions. It is 
only within the last few years that it has been recognized as 
a social problem, comparable in importance to the problem of 
public education. 

It has been shown that cities in meeting this problem 
are providing and assuming the control of their public play 
and recreation facilities. The municipalization of play and 
recreation seems to be the beginning of the formation of the 
institution, Recreation, which promises to become in import- 
ance and universality comparable to public education. 



90 MUNICIPALIZATION OF RECREATION 

There is great need of a master mind to put together the 
fragments of this forming institution, to bind them into a 
system, not fixed and set, but based upon human developmental 
needs. Conservatism, commercialism, and clash of authorities 
hinder. 

As at present provided and administered, playground and 
recreation facilities of cities are often too far removed from 
the people who need to use them, and in their administration 
there is lack of the recognition of the developmental nature 
of play and recreation. Systematic municipalization of these 
activities, which implies full ownership and control, or at least 
absolute control, would establish recreation districts. Within 
these districts would be provided outdoor facilities and recrea- 
tion buildings easily accessible to all the people of a given 
neighborhood. These units placed close to the people, pro- 
viding wholesome developmental play and recreation for all 
members of the family at all reasonable times, would become 
a recreation-home for the family, and a neighborhood center. 

This institution would do much towards unifying the home 
and readjusting it to the present social situation. Parents and 
children would be bound closer together by new emotional 
interests, which the present city home cannot provide. The 
impersonal aspects of city life would tend to disappear under 
the influence of small community recreational interests. The 
school would continue to educate for "the worthy use of leis- 
ure/' but Recreation would provide means for wholesome and 
developmental uses of leisure outside of school. Labor would 
be protected and directed in its free hours. The church would 
continue to profit by a wider use of recreation, and govern- 
mental machinery could be simplified and coordinated. 

Such an institution would save the child and adolescent 
from commercial exploiters of play and leisure and from dan- 
gerous idleness, and would, with the normal support of the 
other institutions of civilization, make them sound adults, 
capable of transmitting their mental, moral and physical 
vigor to their offspring: for the problem of heredity is the 
problem of the child and adolescent. The adult, as guardian 
of the child and adolescent, and as worker, would be made more 
efficient through this institution. 

This new institution is developing in the city. Urbaniza- 
tion is making the nation a city in social practices, so this in- 
stitution promises in time to become national. 



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